Ginger Without Borders

When the plane broke yesterday, there was the usual massive group of angry passengers vying to get on the next possible flight to their destination. I, on the other hand, was very flexible – I’ll be in Europe 6 weeks, I don’t mind a day delay. So I decided to call customer service and have them rebook me, staying very calm and open to whatever works best for the airline. Maybe if I’m nice enough they’ll upgrade me, right? (It has happened before.)

Unfortunately for me, I got the world’s most incompetent representative. According to this employee, every flight for the next week is preemptively delayed and my only choice is to go to Charolette (a 3 hour drive away) to fly out; fly into Gatwick (a 1 hour train from Edinburgh); or refund my ticket (which would mean buying a $2000 last minute, one way ticket with another airline). Obviously none of these were acceptable options. 😑

Instead I spent 40minutes on the phone, and finally convinced the employee to put me on an early connection to Newark on the 27th, and get me on (accord to him) ‘the next 8pm connection to Edinburgh’. With a disturbingly long layover in Newark. Now, later I found out there is an 8pm connection every day, but at the time I agreed I did not know this. (Future update – all flights were on time and I had a sickening 5 hours to kill time in the most boring and expensive airport on earth.)

So essentially my Edinburgh trip is going to be cut short a few days, but I’m okay with it. I got to repack and take out some pointless things, go to the gym for an unnecessarily long run, eat some delicious home cooked food, and cuddle with Phantom more. But good lord, 7 pointless hours at the airport and a horribly incompetent customer service representative was not the best way to start a long trip.

Side note – if you ever have checked bags and need to be rebooked, only talk with the airline representative at the desk because you’ll have to talk to them anyway to get your bags back/changed to your new reservation. Not worth dealing with a person on the phone.