So, the plan was to fly from NYC to Austin - stay for a few days to visit friends, family and get our rental property (which had recently been vacated) in order. We were then to fly to San Miguel de Allende (via Leon) in Mexico for a friends wedding. From there back to NYC. We arranged travel through continental.com buying a multi point ticket NYC-AUS-LEON-NYC.

Thursday night at midnight we are just getting packed up and I go to continental.com to check in online for our 9am flight the next morning. When I go to check in the site comes up with an error asking if I want to re-purchase the ticket. Very confused, I pull up my email confirmation and looked it over closely. Turns out I was supposed to fly out that morning!! I had it in my head that Friday morning was our flight, but in actuality I had put the date into the system wrong and our flight was Thursday morning.

I immediatley picked up the phone calling Continental to inform them of the mistake and get booked on any flight that next day. Upon talking to a few customer service reps and a manager, spending over an hour on the phone pleading my case, the answer was final. In order to get on a flight the next day I would have to cough up an extra three thousand dollars!! This was just simply unacceptable.

Furthermore, they informed me that in 20 minutes the entire itinerary was to be deleted from the system and all travel was to be for***d because it was a non-refundable ticket.

The representatives at Continental were completely unsympathetic and would provide absolutely no assistance. Finally, after prodding for solutions I found out I could reinstate the remaining legs of the ticket (minus the NYC to Austin route) for a $100 change fee per person. My wife and I were traveling so I coughed up the $200 bucks to at least get those flights secured.

Now, I had to find a way to get to Austin from NYC. I had a fair amount of OnePass miles and inquired about using those to book the ticket. Absolutely, they said we have plenty of room on the flight you thought you were supposed to be on (that they now wanted to charge me $3k for!!) so we can deduct the 50k miles from your account and put you and your wife on that flight. Oh, and there's going to be a last minute booking penalty of $75 each (or something similar... can't remember the exact figure). At this point I was feeling like I'd sooner buy a new ticket on another airline that give Continental another dime.

We both have premiere status on United so I gave them a call. Within 10 minutes of talking to a United representative she had us on a flight leaving the next morning to Austin flying through Chicago (our continental ticket was non-stop) with no last minute screw you charge. I decided to go this route and ended up booking mileage travel on United to Austin. The rest of our trip went fantastic (except for the 6 hour delay in Houston getting back to NYC on continental) and all was well. I just shudder to think that if we hadn't been fortunate enough to have a healthy balance in our mileage accounts we would have been absolutely screwed!

United scored serious points, while we vowed to never fly Continental again. One would think that Continental would see beyond the immediate screw fee and accomodate their customers (even a $300 penalty or something would have been minorly acceptable!) knowing that they will gain their loyalty for future flights.

To add insult to injury continetnal double charged us for the "change fees" to keep the rest of our flights intact and I had to spend an hour on-hold re-hashing the details of everything that happened to finally get it refunded.

I highly encourage everyone reading this to avoid Continental like the plague!

So...you goofed on the dates on a non-refundable ticket, and then are upset that they held you to the rules you agreed upon when you purchased said ticket? If the ticket was also non-transferrable, then perhaps you are lucky that they allowed the changes to the rest of the itinerary.

The oops with the dates may seem like a simple mistake to you, but you have to realize that your 'oops' seat is a product - one that disappears once the door closes on that flight. It can't be restocked and resold. It would be like going to a restaurant, asking them to cook up a fab meal - and then saying "Oops! I really wanted to eat out tomorrow night! Can you just cook it again later without asking me to pay again?"

I am sorry that they couldn't be more flexible with you - it's not easy to break the rules these days. It stinks! But perhaps you could take some of the responsibility for this expensive lesson as well, rather than putting all of the blame on the airline.

So you accidentally put in the wrong date, and you didn't catch it when you received the emailed itinerary, correct?

So exactly how is Continental in the wrong here? It is YOUR mistake...

I understand it is my mistake, but the things that made me irate about this:

1. Thousand of dollars, instead of hundreds.

2. Had availability on the same flight next day (one I thought I was on) even said there were award seats on it.

There are times when one is traveling when things happen. Maybe you get a flat on the way to the airport. Maybe your meeting is unavoidablely late and you miss your flight. I understand there are penalties when the unexpected happens. However, when these things do happen do you want to be on a carrier that's going to try to help you out and get you on your way or one that's going to put a thousand+ dollar road block in your way?

I might add that conversely I understand when I get to the airport if my flight doesn't take off due to weather, mecahnical, computer, crew (all of which has happened to me before) problems. I also don't expet for the airline to pay me thousands of dollars.

Yes, but for the most part these things are uncontrollable. However, when the booking was made on continental.com you controlled the dates of travel and also received an e-mail confirmation as stated by empedocles. You would have also received an e-ticket receipt by e-mail confirming your payment and flight schedule.

Probably at this stage, you might just want to consider re-booking NYC-BJX-NYC and omit the AUS stop, this will probably lower your new fare considerably, there also some 3 day advance purchase fares between these 2 cities. If some of your AUS friends are also attending the wedding, then this would help ease the frustration of not visiting them in AUS.


�Mucha suerte!

You snooze, you lose. Unfortunately you made a mistake, and, as such, you were treated just like any other passenger who wanted to buy a last-minute ticket. How is CO wrong here? They gave you the option of spending about $150 for 2 award tickets, but that still wasn't satisfactory to you. I find your logic inconsistent. Seems to me that you're ticked off that they didn't just rebook the whole itinerary at no cost to you.

I missed my flight - for whatever reason - continentals reaction would have been the same. I've been flying for a long time and have missed flights before for various reasons (though this was a first for goofing on the date). American, United both just put you on the next flight assuming there is availability. They don't even charge a fee. I understand times are different and continentals trying to make some money, but if this had happened to you would you have reasonably been ok w/ continental asking you for $3k?

And if you had made this same mistake with any other major airline, do you really think they would act any differently toward their rules? I'm not a fan of CO at all. In fact, I gave up Elite status because it was worthless to me. That said, I don't think CO was doing anything out of the ordinary for airlines.

CO like the other airlines overbooks so those two seats could have been sold by CO if there had been demand for that flight.

I guess I can see your point if I didn't travel so much. I literally view the airline as a business partner. When I made a stupid mistake they took the opportunity to try and screw me. The flights the following day were near empty and instead of charging a change penalty they tried to charge a exorbenant fee which almost made me miss a great friends wedding.

If you think UA would have given you a break in the same situation (without using miles), you are mistaken. And if you think CO wouldn't have let you use miles just like UA, you are also mistaken.

CO didn't behave any differently than any other airline would have. If you don't like the way they acted, stop buying non-refundable fares or flying at all.

Unfortunately they don't view you the same way you view them. That's another reason I do what I can to avoid the majors.

I actually asked the UA agent that exact question when I booked my award ticket - she said they would have just put us on the same flight the next day. And, coincidentally, another firend flying out of Austin to Mexico for the wedding missed her flight because she overslept. She was on American. They put her on the next flight next day no fees.

This is not standard practice to charge someone thousands of dollars. Continental was willing to put us on the flight using award travel, but they have penalties for last minute award bookings. Something the others do not have. I don't have too much of a problem with this, but in the situation it was just adding insult to injury.

Why is it "unacceptable" to charge you walk-up prices for next-day travel? Because the airline should have broken its rules for you alone? Because your own booking error, and failure to look back over your own work between booking and check-in, is somehow the airline's problem? Because you're an extra special customer? Sheez.

I am NOT an apologist for Continental but this is your problem. If you really fly so much, you know to recheck booked itineraries frequently to see if anything's changed.

You remind me of the (true) story of the woman touring the Everglades who roamed off the trail and into shallow water, where she was attacked by an alligator. The ranger who rescued her told her she was lucky to be alive and asked her if she hadn't seen the big sign: "WARNING: STAY ON TRAIL: ALLIGATORS IN WATER." The woman said, "Oh, yes. But I didn't think that meant ME."

Nobody's THAT special. Learn the rules.

First, I'm very sorry you missed a great friend's wedding.

Second, I don't see how trying to accommodate you for $150 is "screwing you". Mistakes have consequences and, in this case, they quantified the error as being worth at least $150. Yes, they tried to get you for $3k, but I think I might have sacrified 50,000 miles and $150 to remedy my error.

For what it's worth, sometimes I find that if I don't get the answer I want from the first customer service agent, I say "thanks", call back, and try to get a better answer from the next person. Granted, it sounds like you had to spend a long time on the phone with the first person, but a second call to CO might have been worthwhile.

Ummm, because I had a booked flight that I missed and I wasn't just walking up trying to buy a ticket on the next flight. Because I had booked travel on several legs and this was just one of those legs. Because of a little thing called customer service!

To be clear, I wasn't looking for special treatment, I think Continental should extend this courtesy to everyone, like the other majors do. Furthermore, to be clear, I could certainly understand if there was not any space on the flight and was fully prepared to have to go a round about route or fly stand by. These were not options. It was $3k or lose the ticket.