I've always been a big supporter (am Plat about to become CP.) I'm just beyond frustration with trying to get the simplest things done - like booking a ticket using an electronic voucher.

I guess US Airways has so many types of travel vouchers that they don't know what to do with them. I called Reservations, just as instructed on the E-TUV. The person helped me with the reservation, told me I owed $57 after my $300 E-TUV, but then was completely unable to find the voucher in their computer system or through their Dividend Miles system. She told me to call Customer Relations to ensure that they didn't give me the wrong number. She held the reservation for me.

I called Customer Relations. Waited on hold for well over an hour. Went back and forth with a very nice gentleman. He got a "supervisor" from reservations on the line. Between the two of them they could not locate this E-TUV.

He finally looked in their files and found it - the code didn't work because it was never activated. He created a new one.

Back to the reservation person. She couldn't work on the reservation that had been built for me. She had to rebuild it. She couldn't find all the flights. By the time she was done it was going to be $120 more expensive than originally quoted. I objected, she argued, then put me on hold.

She rebuilt the fare that I had when I originally called and finally I got my ticket booked. DONE! and it only took 3 hours!

First, the customer relations and reservation people I spoke to were terrific - polite, helpful (particularly customer relations) and determined to see that I got what I needed. However, I shudder to think of what it cost them to book this ONE ticket - I can only guess that they put at least 2-3 person-hours into this (customer relations and reservation were on the phone together for at least 45 minutes). They blamed it on "there's too many types of electronic vouchers and it's hard to keep track of them."

This is just indicative of so many experiences I have with US - frustration and lots of wasted time. I know other airlines are just as bad (if not worse if your phone is answered in India,) but I am finding that US is getting more and more frustrating to deal with. Am I alone? Am I crazy for thinking that booking a reservation by phone should take 10 minutes?