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Old Jan 6, 2014, 6:23 pm
  #13  
High Technology
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Programs: DL Plat, Bonvoy Titanium
Posts: 215
Originally Posted by davetravels
almost

Seriously??? You couldn't get lunch for less than $30 PP???
Sorry, the lunch and snack were separate meals -- I wasn't clear in differentiating them as this weekend is a little fuzzy: I left Sydney on Saturday at noon Australian Time (equivalent to 8:00PM Friday night on the East Coast), and got back home in the NYC suburbs at 7:00PM Eastern on Monday night. Regarding the way I used the vouchers:

Since we were outside of security due to our cancellation coming from an international redeye flight, the only food I know of is the Starbucks in the AA terminal (T4 at LAX). A sandwich or salad is nearly $10, then you tack on a drink and tax and I think we were just over $70 for the 5 of us for Saturday's lunch (I used $70 of vouchers and paid a few bucks in cash).

Since we were delayed essentially two days (but only got meal vouchers for one day's worth at $10 per person x 3 meals), we used the remaining vouchers for a snack at the Westin down the road since we had a few hours to kill between when our rental car was due back and checking in for the redeye on Sunday night, and we didn't want to sit in the SkyClub. For 5 people we ordered 3 appetizers and 2 desserts from the bar menu (not exactly a meal for 5, but we had lunch at 3:30 on Sunday so we weren't starving) . That took care of the remaining $80 (actually the bill was $103 before tip, but that included my 2 beers and a cocktail for the Mrs.). I know hotel prices are high, but these prices aren't really out of line from what you'd see at an airport and I like the Westin's bar food choices (which are from Daily Grill).

I wasn't trying to stretch the vouchers to cover all of our expenses -- I know you could probably eat for $10/meal if you needed to. I paid for Dinner on Saturday which was about $100 at a small Mexican place and we had lunch on Sunday out-and-about which was about $60 in cash. I also rented a car and took the kids to the Santa Monica Pier on Sunday since it was my little one's 9th birthday and she was upset that she wasn't going to make it home for her birthday after being away for 2 weeks. So even though DL provided the meal/hotel vouchers, it cost me close to $300 out of pocket. Note: I am not complaining about the cost -- my view is that when life gives you lemons, you either make lemonade or a cocktail out of them...


Back to the original topic: The way the red coat seemed to be explaining it was that meal vouchers were going away, period. Perhaps they were referring to the debit card feature (which I admittedly forgot about), but they certainly didn't say that they were replacing meal vouchers with a debit card system, rather they said that they will no longer issue meal vouchers starting later this month and that I might want to write in. Does the debit system start later this month?

Last edited by High Technology; Jan 6, 2014 at 6:35 pm
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