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lovely Rita....
Sep. 23rd, 2005 06:41 pm... wreaked her own special brand of nonsense on our unsuspecting lives these past few days. On Thursday, I logged on to the Continental Airlines website to check the status of our flight to Mexico (to see my dad get married on Saturday), only to find out that the Houston-Mexico leg had been cancelled due to Hurricane Rita. Thus began a nightmare of trying to get Continental on the phone (competing against thousands of other people trying to either reroute their flights out of Houston or else simply trying to get out of Houston with whatever stuff they could carry. I kid you not, the automated voice system at Continental said, ¨We are experiencing heavy call volume due to Hurricane Rita. Your wait time for an agent will be 300 minutes.¨
In case that floated right by you as you were reading, yes, that was 300 minutes, or five hours on hold. And because there was no way else to get the flight change without getting charged, I proceded to wait on hold from 630 to 1030 pm. (some people must have given up in frustration). When I finally get on the phone, they tell me there is nothing they can do other than to refund my ticket because Continental doesn`t fly to our destination in Mexico any other way except through Houston. Add to this the fact that I have to okay possible new options with my brother in Boston and our family friend, who are all on the same ticket purchase made by my dad originally.
Well, I havent slept yet, but the short story is, we got a whole new flight with about six hours to spare on American Airlines, and we are now in Guanajuato, Mexico. We are safe and reunited with my dad. More later.
In case that floated right by you as you were reading, yes, that was 300 minutes, or five hours on hold. And because there was no way else to get the flight change without getting charged, I proceded to wait on hold from 630 to 1030 pm. (some people must have given up in frustration). When I finally get on the phone, they tell me there is nothing they can do other than to refund my ticket because Continental doesn`t fly to our destination in Mexico any other way except through Houston. Add to this the fact that I have to okay possible new options with my brother in Boston and our family friend, who are all on the same ticket purchase made by my dad originally.
Well, I havent slept yet, but the short story is, we got a whole new flight with about six hours to spare on American Airlines, and we are now in Guanajuato, Mexico. We are safe and reunited with my dad. More later.
