As I write I have been on hold with Air France for 26 minutes. Our visa consultant has been terribly surprised to discover that since France has lifted travel restrictions there are a million people who want or need to travel there. Consequently the earliest we can get in the the Vancouver visa office for an interview is August 24th. Suddenly our September 1st departure date looks very impossible.
So, if Air France ever answers their phones, (30 minutes) we’ll change the reservation for the end of September. This is one of those occasions when I do NOT like surprises.
Once that’s done it will be on to the next step: cancelling or changing our car rental reservation and hotel reservations in Paris. (We’ve decided to fly straight into Bordeaux instead of Paris.) Once again I’m reminded that doing anything businesslike on-line is eventually a nightmare - Amazon excepted. They may be evil to the core, but boy do they have customer service figured out.
Log into Expedia, go to “My Trips". click on the Hertz reservation and…. nothing.
(Meanwhile at Air France, at 36 minutes, “All our agents are busy. Please continue to hold until an agent comes available” “Please continue to hold the line, and thank you for your patience.”)
Digging into Expedia Help you find:
Except that nowhere on any page of my Expedia reservations are the words “Manage Booking” or “Cancel Reservation.” Yes, I looked twice.
(Postscript - found it for one of the reservations but it doesn’t work)
One hour. Do I get a prize?
(postscript: found out that where the Air France Canada help line says that it’s open til 10pm “local time” they mean Paris….)
I’m sure that someone somewhere believes that this horrid, awful, idiotic treatment is good for the bottom line, but honestly they really don’t understand the number of people who just choose not to travel, or shop, or do anything because the hassle is so not worth the reward.