Very important info for Occasional Travelers
(How not to get Gnomed by Travelocity and Screwed by United Airlines)

Preface:
The whole family was very excited to go see Grandma and Grandpa over Spring Break. My parents spend the cold Wisconsin winter months down in Gulf Shores, Alabama and Grandma was super excited to have us come down and visit. We purchased tickets, partly with credit card miles / partly with cash in January for the trip in late March. A red flag went up when T ravelocity called a month later – flight times had been changed and they would have to change our flights. After a long time talking to customer service, our original flights were still on but we were left with a feeling – did we really have flights?
On Friday, March 26th we drove to Milwaukee to catch our 11:40a plane. We arrived early, went through security, got our boarding passes issued, then found that our flight was delayed – they were “missing a part”. The guy at the gate said we should still make our connection in Chicago (there were 14 of us catching that flight from Chicago to Washington Dulles). We waited. The flight was delayed again. We probably weren't going to make our connection. The flight was delayed until 1:15p, the same time our flight left Chicago. The desk agent told us there were no other flights, everything was booked up solid for spring break. The best he could do was Monday, from Milwaukee or Chicago. I called Travelocity, there were no flights available according to “Brian”. The next available flight was Sunday, there were no other options. We were stuck, no other options. “Would you like to cancel your reservation, you will get a full refund”, said “Brian”. What else am I going to do? I canceled the reservation. No trip, no vacation, no Grandma. She was devastated. The family regrouped at my wife's sister's house a half hour away. We decided to look at any other options and went back to Travelocity's web site. There WERE flights available, a whole screen full of them!

Rule #1
Don't believe the Gate Agent when he says there are no other flights available – THEY LIE! I should have known when he causally looked down at the screen, like he looking down at a monitoring screen from the “Matrix”, and said there are no other options.

Rule #2
Don't believe the Tavelocity Agent when they say there are no other flights available – THEY LIE! How can Travelocity customer service not have access to the same technology that I have on my home computer? I spent over two hours combined on the phone with those clowns, and it took me 5 minutes to look up what flights were available.

Rule #3
Do NOT cancel your reservation until all other options have been exhauseted. Call the airline directly, look for flights on travel websites, call other airlines. Once you cancel your tickets, Travelocity and the airline will not help you any more, even if it is their fault. Once you cancel your reservation, they hang you out to dry. You're done. Of course Travelocity will sell you a new ticket that YOU just found, but at a super inflated price / triple the points.

Oh, and by the way, you won't get your money / points back for 1-2 credit card billing cycles, even if you want to buy another flight.

Truthfully, I think they really don't want to accommodate you on other flights that ARE available, because then they can sell that expensive ticket to some other sucker that needs it at the last moment.

Travelocity and United Airlines LIED to me. Don't let them ruin your vacation.

Mark