marciemi
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 29, 1999
- Messages
- 4,842
We booked with Midwest last September for our late July/early August trip. I've checked it randomly about once a month and everything's been fine. Until last night when I try to check the reservation.
First sign that things are not going well: when I enter my confirmation code, it says "We are unable to display this flight information. Please contact Midwest airlines directly at ... to discuss flight options."
Second sign that things are not going well: I call the number listed and hear "Thank you for calling Midwest Flight Schedule change center. Our hours of operation are..."
Since of course I'm not in those hours of operation, I look up the itineraries for our flights and --surprise-- nothing like them exists anymore. I immediately stress out because our flight was supposed to arrive around 1pm, and the only options are a flight leaving at 6am that connects in Kansas City and still gets in around 2:30 (and we're driving 2 hours to Milwaukee in order to get the non-stop flight), which means that if even if we spend the night in Milwaukee (which we were planning on), we still have to get the kids up by, say, 3:30am. Not a good start. Option 2 was a late afternoon flight getting in at 6:30ish (but nonstop). Then we have to get the rental, get to the house, go shopping, and all these things that I was planning on having another 5 1/2 hours to do before getting up early and heading out to the parks the next morning.
And now I have to wait until morning to find out what I can do.
So this morning I call Midwest as soon as they open. The lady tells me that the flights have been changed and I should have gotten an email. I tell her that I haven't, but I do have an average of 2-3 a week from them telling me about all the great deals I can get from them and their wonderful customer service, blah, blah, blah. Looked back through all my emails - nope, nothing regarding my flight since last September. I find it extremely frustrating when they can't even bother to tell you when they do this!
So I ask what we can do. Meanwhile I've pulled up all the options, priced rental cars for changing, have Orbitz up with all the other airline choices, etc. She tells me that our flight going out has just been changed from 9:30am to 7:30am and we're all set. The flight is full (actually according to her overbooked), which is why I couldn't find it last night. I think about this and decide that although this means getting the kids up at 5, maybe it's not the end of the world. Could even eat lunch in the Orlando airport and shop at the Disney store and wouldn't even have to change my rental car. Returning flights are 2 hours earlier too, but still in the 11am range so we don't have to get up at the crack of dawn. Okay - I can deal with this.
I ask her about seating and she tells me it's all taken care of and gives me my seat numbers and promises an email confirming all this. Great. I'm happy.
Until I actually get the email and look at the seating.
Well, I look at the seating diagram just for the heck of it to see where we're sitting and, huh, when I pull it up there are only 4 colored seats indicating me and my traveling party. Bummer since there are 5 of us going! I cross check carefully and finally determine that my youngest son doesn't have a seat. Well, actually he does, but it's a seat number that doesn't EXIST on this type of aircraft! Apparently when they switched flights, they also switched aircraft and just assigned the original seats. Whether they existed or not.
Since the agent had mentioned that this flight was overbooked, now I'm concerned that we're going to get to the airport and my son won't have a seat. Or best case, certainly won't be sitting by the rest of us!
So back on the phone. Another agent who basically says, sorry, nothing she can do, have to check with them at the airport, bummer. No other seats available but she's sure he'll get on and hey, they might even be able to get us together when we get to the airport. Sorry, but I don't want to be dealing with that at 5:30 in the morning. I point out to her that on my screen I see 2 other seats available in the back of the plane (we're in rows 5 and 6, they're in rows 23 and 26). After she keeps insisting she can't do anything, I ask her if she could possibly put my son in my husband's seat (thus having me next to one kid, across the aisle from another and the third in the row behind us at least) and move my husband to the back so at least I'm by the kids and he can always ask for an exit row when we get there (which he usually does when he travels for business since he's 6'2). She says no problem, she'll move him back there and send me another email and we'll all be happy. Sort of. But I can still deal with this.
Until I get the email an hour later....
Okay, she did what I asked and moved my husband back to row 23. Fine. However, I happen to note that she did NOT put my son in my husband's seat as I asked her to. She moved him into his brother's seat, and moved his brother back to row 26. By himself. Quickly pull the flight up and of course that seat's not available anymore. So now we have a window seat in row 5, an aisle on the other side of row 5, a seat in row 6, and one in row 23 and 26, since she gave away the seat that was between the 2 kids. UUGGHH!
On the phone yet again where I explain all this to an agent who decides she wants nothing to do with this situation and puts me back in queue to talk to the agent who screwed it up. Talk to her and she says, sorry, the flight is full, nowhere I can move them now, too bad. You can try to fix it at the airport. By this time I'm FURIOUS (can you guess this?)! I ask WHY she did this. She says SHE didn't do it, the computer did. Nothing anyone can do. Seats aren't guaranteed anyways. I tell her that if I didn't want guaranteed seats I would have flown Air Tran or Southwest instead. She says, fine, if you want I'll just refund your fare and you can fly someone else. Even more frustrating to me is that she theoretically did all this on the first phone call and she HAD to have seen then that the seat numbers weren't right. I read them back to her and she agreed that we still had those seats. So I can only believe that she messed it up and didn't bother telling me and hoped when I got the email I either wouldn't notice, or would call someone else and she wouldn't have to deal with it!
I ask if we can possibly talk to someone else (a supervisor) who might be able to do something. I wait a long time and finally someone else comes on and says, nope, can't do nothing, sorry. I can wait and call customer service if I want during the week, but they won't be able to help me either. No one can until the day of the flight. Sorry. Too bad. By this time I'm mostly frustrated by (1) their attitude, and (2) the fact that we HAD that seat and now they're telling me they can't change anyone else's seat. Well, I don't understand how they are able to change mine but not possibly anyone else. I KNOW they can. Someone can, but they're just refusing. They keep telling me that I have to understand that the aircraft changed and seats are going to change. Yes, I realize that. That has NOTHING to do with them changing it after it was changed in the first place. I'm telling them my confirmation that I just printed out an hour ago shows us in it and now they gave it away to someone else. She basically says again, sorry, too bad.
So in the meantime I'm pulling up all the other options that I'd clicked out of because I thought we had this settled (twice now!). Ask her about cancelling the flights and she says she can do that and I finally say, in a resigned voice, okay, let's just cancel. She immediately sounds shocked and tells me I DON'T want to do that. I ask why and she asks me if I've priced other flight options recently. I tell her, yes, I have Air Tran pulled up on another screen, the total is $50 cheaper ($10 per person) and the times are better for us. She says, "Oh, I guess in that case I'd do the same thing!" So we go ahead and cancel it and are theoretically supposed to get the refund (I'll let everyone know if that actually happens!). But in the meantime....
Okay - I just checked my credit card and it didn't show a credit (surprise!) and this was all about 10 hours ago. I put my confirmation code in on the Midwest website and it still pulled up all the flight info. Not a good sign, but I'll let you know if they ever pick up the phone since I'm on (an at least 10 minute!) hold with them!
Well, meanwhile, we decide that since we basically have to start from scratch, maybe we should reconsider what we want to do (which has been locked in stone since last September!) Well, heck, even though the Air Tran flight leaves at 8am (now kids getting up at 5:30), that's still kind of early. Maybe now that we have their summer schedules and we know that there's not that much going on on Friday we should just fly out a day early!
So I check the fares, fully expecting them to be more on a Friday, but no, they're still the same ($50 cheaper than Midwest). And there's a 3pm flight that gets us in around 6. I know I said I didn't want to get in that late, but that was a day later when I already have everything planned. Now it would be an EXTRA day!
More checking and yep, that flight is available at that price for all 5 of us. Check the rental car and only minimally more because of the days vs. weeks thing. Check the website of the owner of the house we're renting and it still shows the house available the night before. Send a quick email to the owner (in England) who replies (astonishingly quickly!) with the price and says sure we can add the day on!
So---ta da---now the end result is that we're staying an extra day! We're going to go to the MK that first morning (July 28th) now instead of the following Saturday (Aug 4) and take a break day in there. I was concerned because our schedule had us doing effectively 9 days of rope drops in a row (2 at Universal, 6 at Disney, and one VERY early morning for surfing at Typhoon Lagoon). Now we get a sleep in day before we try to tackle Universal. We may still be able to do something later that day (8/4) since we were only coming up with using 9 days out of our 10 day ticket so great - just a free day to do the parks or not as we choose, but definitely sleep in.
We plan to just do one of our planned mornings at the MK that first day and hopefully be back at the house by 2 or so to do all our shopping, unpacking, etc. then. I'll just have the first day's clothes laid out separately, pack some water bottles, snacks, and pop tarts to get through that first morning, then we can go from there! So the kids can relax the rest of the day and then we'll get back to our schedule as planned started Sunday but have an extra break day in there to just sleep in and enjoy the house more! I'm psyched!
Okay, just got through to Midwest who pulled up the reservation and said that yes, it was in fact cancelled, but financial transactions aren't posted until after 8pm and may not show up tomorrow because it's Sunday, but for sure will by Monday. But she confirmed that it was cancelled so (hopefully!), we're good to go!
Guess the bright side (beside the extra day at Disney!) is that this whole thing still wasn't nearly as frustrating as what I went through just over a month ago with, (wow, what a surprise?!) Midwest. My son (13) flew out unaccompanied to Boston to visit with his Godparents and cousins. Well, to make a long story short, he flew out Thursday and it was 45 and sunny. Suddenly Friday they're predicting over a foot of snow on Sunday in Milwaukee (where he would be connecting) and Green Bay (where we live and he'd be flying into). We decide maybe it would be better to get him home Saturday since if there is that much snow, who knows when he would be able to get home. Plus his Godparents both needed to be at work on Monday and really didn't want to spend the day at the airport seeing if he could get on a flight.
I promptly call a zillion times (guess what? So is everyone else!) and after hours of busy signals and answering prompts to finally be told they can't take my call, I FINALLY get someone who tells me I can change it for a $60 fee. I call everyone, talk to the Godparents, my husband, and him and we all agree it's not what we want, but HAS to be done. Well, call back (again this takes well over an hour) and the person tells me the first person was WRONG - his ticket requires a Saturday night stay so they can't change it. I ask, argue, etc. Call back again (another hour!) and get told the same thing. And again. And FINALLY (on the 4th try!) get someone who's willing to help (I'm frustrated by this time because they'd rather strand a kid in Boston than waive a Saturday night stay requirement when there's a storm coming). She talks to her supervisor, they look at weather.com which is saying dire things and waive the change fee, and the Saturday night stay and allow him to come home Saturday instead. And in case you're wondering, yes, we did get 14 inches of snow, and YES, his flight was cancelled on Sunday that he was scheduled on.
Guess this time worse case was we were getting up early or not sitting together - still much less frustrating than not being able to get your kid back home! None of them are ever flying unaccompanied in the winter again. And guess what? We're certainly not flying Midwest again (well, actually, other than my son, none of us have even gotten to fly them in the first place!)!
Thanks if you've read through this entire drama! Guess the warnings are: check your flights often, expect changes, and don't try to change seats!
First sign that things are not going well: when I enter my confirmation code, it says "We are unable to display this flight information. Please contact Midwest airlines directly at ... to discuss flight options."
Second sign that things are not going well: I call the number listed and hear "Thank you for calling Midwest Flight Schedule change center. Our hours of operation are..."
Since of course I'm not in those hours of operation, I look up the itineraries for our flights and --surprise-- nothing like them exists anymore. I immediately stress out because our flight was supposed to arrive around 1pm, and the only options are a flight leaving at 6am that connects in Kansas City and still gets in around 2:30 (and we're driving 2 hours to Milwaukee in order to get the non-stop flight), which means that if even if we spend the night in Milwaukee (which we were planning on), we still have to get the kids up by, say, 3:30am. Not a good start. Option 2 was a late afternoon flight getting in at 6:30ish (but nonstop). Then we have to get the rental, get to the house, go shopping, and all these things that I was planning on having another 5 1/2 hours to do before getting up early and heading out to the parks the next morning.
And now I have to wait until morning to find out what I can do.
So this morning I call Midwest as soon as they open. The lady tells me that the flights have been changed and I should have gotten an email. I tell her that I haven't, but I do have an average of 2-3 a week from them telling me about all the great deals I can get from them and their wonderful customer service, blah, blah, blah. Looked back through all my emails - nope, nothing regarding my flight since last September. I find it extremely frustrating when they can't even bother to tell you when they do this!
So I ask what we can do. Meanwhile I've pulled up all the options, priced rental cars for changing, have Orbitz up with all the other airline choices, etc. She tells me that our flight going out has just been changed from 9:30am to 7:30am and we're all set. The flight is full (actually according to her overbooked), which is why I couldn't find it last night. I think about this and decide that although this means getting the kids up at 5, maybe it's not the end of the world. Could even eat lunch in the Orlando airport and shop at the Disney store and wouldn't even have to change my rental car. Returning flights are 2 hours earlier too, but still in the 11am range so we don't have to get up at the crack of dawn. Okay - I can deal with this.
I ask her about seating and she tells me it's all taken care of and gives me my seat numbers and promises an email confirming all this. Great. I'm happy.
Until I actually get the email and look at the seating.
Well, I look at the seating diagram just for the heck of it to see where we're sitting and, huh, when I pull it up there are only 4 colored seats indicating me and my traveling party. Bummer since there are 5 of us going! I cross check carefully and finally determine that my youngest son doesn't have a seat. Well, actually he does, but it's a seat number that doesn't EXIST on this type of aircraft! Apparently when they switched flights, they also switched aircraft and just assigned the original seats. Whether they existed or not.
Since the agent had mentioned that this flight was overbooked, now I'm concerned that we're going to get to the airport and my son won't have a seat. Or best case, certainly won't be sitting by the rest of us!
So back on the phone. Another agent who basically says, sorry, nothing she can do, have to check with them at the airport, bummer. No other seats available but she's sure he'll get on and hey, they might even be able to get us together when we get to the airport. Sorry, but I don't want to be dealing with that at 5:30 in the morning. I point out to her that on my screen I see 2 other seats available in the back of the plane (we're in rows 5 and 6, they're in rows 23 and 26). After she keeps insisting she can't do anything, I ask her if she could possibly put my son in my husband's seat (thus having me next to one kid, across the aisle from another and the third in the row behind us at least) and move my husband to the back so at least I'm by the kids and he can always ask for an exit row when we get there (which he usually does when he travels for business since he's 6'2). She says no problem, she'll move him back there and send me another email and we'll all be happy. Sort of. But I can still deal with this.
Until I get the email an hour later....
Okay, she did what I asked and moved my husband back to row 23. Fine. However, I happen to note that she did NOT put my son in my husband's seat as I asked her to. She moved him into his brother's seat, and moved his brother back to row 26. By himself. Quickly pull the flight up and of course that seat's not available anymore. So now we have a window seat in row 5, an aisle on the other side of row 5, a seat in row 6, and one in row 23 and 26, since she gave away the seat that was between the 2 kids. UUGGHH!
On the phone yet again where I explain all this to an agent who decides she wants nothing to do with this situation and puts me back in queue to talk to the agent who screwed it up. Talk to her and she says, sorry, the flight is full, nowhere I can move them now, too bad. You can try to fix it at the airport. By this time I'm FURIOUS (can you guess this?)! I ask WHY she did this. She says SHE didn't do it, the computer did. Nothing anyone can do. Seats aren't guaranteed anyways. I tell her that if I didn't want guaranteed seats I would have flown Air Tran or Southwest instead. She says, fine, if you want I'll just refund your fare and you can fly someone else. Even more frustrating to me is that she theoretically did all this on the first phone call and she HAD to have seen then that the seat numbers weren't right. I read them back to her and she agreed that we still had those seats. So I can only believe that she messed it up and didn't bother telling me and hoped when I got the email I either wouldn't notice, or would call someone else and she wouldn't have to deal with it!
I ask if we can possibly talk to someone else (a supervisor) who might be able to do something. I wait a long time and finally someone else comes on and says, nope, can't do nothing, sorry. I can wait and call customer service if I want during the week, but they won't be able to help me either. No one can until the day of the flight. Sorry. Too bad. By this time I'm mostly frustrated by (1) their attitude, and (2) the fact that we HAD that seat and now they're telling me they can't change anyone else's seat. Well, I don't understand how they are able to change mine but not possibly anyone else. I KNOW they can. Someone can, but they're just refusing. They keep telling me that I have to understand that the aircraft changed and seats are going to change. Yes, I realize that. That has NOTHING to do with them changing it after it was changed in the first place. I'm telling them my confirmation that I just printed out an hour ago shows us in it and now they gave it away to someone else. She basically says again, sorry, too bad.
So in the meantime I'm pulling up all the other options that I'd clicked out of because I thought we had this settled (twice now!). Ask her about cancelling the flights and she says she can do that and I finally say, in a resigned voice, okay, let's just cancel. She immediately sounds shocked and tells me I DON'T want to do that. I ask why and she asks me if I've priced other flight options recently. I tell her, yes, I have Air Tran pulled up on another screen, the total is $50 cheaper ($10 per person) and the times are better for us. She says, "Oh, I guess in that case I'd do the same thing!" So we go ahead and cancel it and are theoretically supposed to get the refund (I'll let everyone know if that actually happens!). But in the meantime....
Okay - I just checked my credit card and it didn't show a credit (surprise!) and this was all about 10 hours ago. I put my confirmation code in on the Midwest website and it still pulled up all the flight info. Not a good sign, but I'll let you know if they ever pick up the phone since I'm on (an at least 10 minute!) hold with them!
Well, meanwhile, we decide that since we basically have to start from scratch, maybe we should reconsider what we want to do (which has been locked in stone since last September!) Well, heck, even though the Air Tran flight leaves at 8am (now kids getting up at 5:30), that's still kind of early. Maybe now that we have their summer schedules and we know that there's not that much going on on Friday we should just fly out a day early!
So I check the fares, fully expecting them to be more on a Friday, but no, they're still the same ($50 cheaper than Midwest). And there's a 3pm flight that gets us in around 6. I know I said I didn't want to get in that late, but that was a day later when I already have everything planned. Now it would be an EXTRA day!
More checking and yep, that flight is available at that price for all 5 of us. Check the rental car and only minimally more because of the days vs. weeks thing. Check the website of the owner of the house we're renting and it still shows the house available the night before. Send a quick email to the owner (in England) who replies (astonishingly quickly!) with the price and says sure we can add the day on!
So---ta da---now the end result is that we're staying an extra day! We're going to go to the MK that first morning (July 28th) now instead of the following Saturday (Aug 4) and take a break day in there. I was concerned because our schedule had us doing effectively 9 days of rope drops in a row (2 at Universal, 6 at Disney, and one VERY early morning for surfing at Typhoon Lagoon). Now we get a sleep in day before we try to tackle Universal. We may still be able to do something later that day (8/4) since we were only coming up with using 9 days out of our 10 day ticket so great - just a free day to do the parks or not as we choose, but definitely sleep in.
We plan to just do one of our planned mornings at the MK that first day and hopefully be back at the house by 2 or so to do all our shopping, unpacking, etc. then. I'll just have the first day's clothes laid out separately, pack some water bottles, snacks, and pop tarts to get through that first morning, then we can go from there! So the kids can relax the rest of the day and then we'll get back to our schedule as planned started Sunday but have an extra break day in there to just sleep in and enjoy the house more! I'm psyched!
Okay, just got through to Midwest who pulled up the reservation and said that yes, it was in fact cancelled, but financial transactions aren't posted until after 8pm and may not show up tomorrow because it's Sunday, but for sure will by Monday. But she confirmed that it was cancelled so (hopefully!), we're good to go!
Guess the bright side (beside the extra day at Disney!) is that this whole thing still wasn't nearly as frustrating as what I went through just over a month ago with, (wow, what a surprise?!) Midwest. My son (13) flew out unaccompanied to Boston to visit with his Godparents and cousins. Well, to make a long story short, he flew out Thursday and it was 45 and sunny. Suddenly Friday they're predicting over a foot of snow on Sunday in Milwaukee (where he would be connecting) and Green Bay (where we live and he'd be flying into). We decide maybe it would be better to get him home Saturday since if there is that much snow, who knows when he would be able to get home. Plus his Godparents both needed to be at work on Monday and really didn't want to spend the day at the airport seeing if he could get on a flight.
I promptly call a zillion times (guess what? So is everyone else!) and after hours of busy signals and answering prompts to finally be told they can't take my call, I FINALLY get someone who tells me I can change it for a $60 fee. I call everyone, talk to the Godparents, my husband, and him and we all agree it's not what we want, but HAS to be done. Well, call back (again this takes well over an hour) and the person tells me the first person was WRONG - his ticket requires a Saturday night stay so they can't change it. I ask, argue, etc. Call back again (another hour!) and get told the same thing. And again. And FINALLY (on the 4th try!) get someone who's willing to help (I'm frustrated by this time because they'd rather strand a kid in Boston than waive a Saturday night stay requirement when there's a storm coming). She talks to her supervisor, they look at weather.com which is saying dire things and waive the change fee, and the Saturday night stay and allow him to come home Saturday instead. And in case you're wondering, yes, we did get 14 inches of snow, and YES, his flight was cancelled on Sunday that he was scheduled on.
Guess this time worse case was we were getting up early or not sitting together - still much less frustrating than not being able to get your kid back home! None of them are ever flying unaccompanied in the winter again. And guess what? We're certainly not flying Midwest again (well, actually, other than my son, none of us have even gotten to fly them in the first place!)!
Thanks if you've read through this entire drama! Guess the warnings are: check your flights often, expect changes, and don't try to change seats!
And I influenced you on this? 
And I was so excited last week that I got the great rate at the Sheraton that now we're not using (but hey, we'll be at Disney instead that night!) 
Guess I can't win!
