My story begins last Thanksgiving.
Actually, it begins earlier than that.
My family flies to Michigan every other year for Christmas to visit Brian's clan. His folks usually pay for it, and from time to time, one of us will have earned enough miles on Delta to offset some of the cost. It's an enormous expense, but his folks are uncomplaining about it. They're delighted for a chance to see their granddaughters, and we have a great time catching up with Brian's relatives and visiting Ann Arbor and other places where Brian spent his youth.
Because airfares have become so crazy, on two occasions, we've flown Spirit Airlines. I'm not sure if any of my readers have had the pleasure of dealing with this carrier, but just to offer a tiny peek into the world of Spirit Airlines, let's dive into a little rabbit hole on the way to my real story.
We first flew Spirit about ten years ago. After boarding the plane in one of our connecting cities (a direct flight to Michigan?? Get real...), we had to wait in a stifling hot plane on the runway for about an hour. We were never offered an explanation or an apology for the huge, torturous delay. Then, on the way home, as they de-iced the plane (which is unsettling in itself), the engines suddenly cut off, and I swear by all that is holy that they rolled a big generator thing up to the side of the plane and JUMP-STARTED the engine. Right there in front of us. So, that's just the mechanical beauty that is Spirit. Shedule-wise, every flight we took on that trip was late. Every single one. We had sort of chalked that up to crazy holiday travel and forgotten about it. Until now.
Just for sport, I will no longer refer to Spirit Airlines by this name -- I choose instead to use its real name: Dementor Airlines. With apologies to J.K. Rowling, this is the best non-expletive-filled term that comes to mind to properly describe this travesty of a company. Almost every interaction I've had with them has left me feeling like a victim of the Dementor's Kiss in Harry Potter's world. For you Muggles (non-magical folk), Dementors are the guards/executioners at Azkaban, the wizarding prison. The very presence of these creepy ghouls sucks all the warmth and happiness out of the atmosphere. Everything turns dark and horrible, and all who are in the presence of Dementors feel as though they will never, ever be happy again. The Dementor's Kiss is the final act of sucking out the victim's soul - used as a punishment for the worst of criminals and considered a fate worse than death. Yep. That about sums up Spirit - I mean, Dementor - Airlines.
Onto my most recent story, which begins last Thanksgiving. Because of conflicting work schedules and the fact that Brian's youngest brother Neil and his girlfriend Emilia were visiting from Paris (where they LIVE. Yep.), we decided to go to Michigan in November instead of at Christmas. The flight there was mercifully uneventful. After a lovely holiday, as we waited for our flight home, a Dementor representative announced that they had over-booked the flight, and they were looking for a volunteer to travel the next day. The volunteer (hereafter to be referred to as "sucker") would be given a voucher for a free round-trip ticket to anywhere Dementor flies, to be used on a future trip during the next year. The sucker would also be put up in a hotel and given meal vouchers to compensate for doing this favor for the airline, and to ensure a pleasant travel experience. After a brief confab with my family, I went to the counter and volunteered to be that sucker.
It was a surreal experience, watching my family - those most dear to me - walking down the hallway to board a plane without me. As the door closed, I got a little teary-eyed and hoped this would all be worth it.
After the plane had left, the Dementor agent finally had time to go through the paperwork with me. She informed me that there was no room on any Dementor flight to L.A. the next day. So she booked me on another airline - I think it was Alaska. That should have tipped me off that this "free ticket" was going to come at a higher price than simply my overnight inconvenience. But, hey. Whatever, I thought. I could use my free ticket to visit my sister Debbie, who lives in Connecticut. She has come West a bunch of times, and I've rarely been able to afford a trip to see her.
The Dementor agent then told me that the usual hotel they use, the Marriott, was booked solid, so they'd have to put me up in a different hotel. She gave me enough meal vouchers to buy my dinner that night and breakfast in the morning before my flight. The vouchers could only be used at the airport itself, so if I wanted to eat that night before bed, it'd have to be there. It was only around 4:30 or so in the afternoon, but I really didn't want to hang around until I was actually hungry. So I choked down part of a salad and a good IPA (the beer was on my own dime - Dementor vouchers don't pay for alcohol) and headed out to find the shuttle to the hotel.
I don't even remember what hotel it was, but it was a tiny, shabby, sad little place so close to the edge of the airport that I almost could have walked there, and its flourescent-illuminated lobby was filled with loads of shabby, sad people who were also stranded overnight. I tried to remain cheerful and muster some perspective, because I was here, after all, voluntarily.
I had no pajamas or toothbrush or anything else, because my suitcase was already on the way to Los Angeles with my family. So I got one of those little cellophane-wrapped disposable toothbrush/toothpaste sets at the front desk and headed to my room. It was there I discovered, from a cardboard table sign, that I could have ordered pizza with my voucher, delivered right to the hotel. Oh well. They probably wouldn't have delivered beer. Or at least good beer.
I spent a forlorn, mostly sleepless night, mostly because I don't sleep well anywhere new on the first night. Plus I was in my clothes. Plus I spent all night hoping not to miss my alarm. Which is silly, but SO, well, me.
Early the next morning, I shuttled back to the airport with other bleary-eyed travelers, shivering in the van (my winter coat was also in Los Angeles by now) as we rode back to the airport. My meal vouchers provided me breakfast and some water and snacks for the plane. That part was kind of funny. I made a bit of a game out of grabbing things off the shelves until the cashier told me I had maxed out my credit.
Anyway, I got home without much further ado, excited that I had put in the extra time and effort to earn myself a free trip to see Debbie. If you're smirking or starting to chuckle with foreboding now, just remember -- as comedian Mike Birbiglia says when recounting a story -- "I KNOW! I'm in the future too!"
The fine print of my Dementor travel voucher proved to be a bit, well, confusing. It said I had to book my flight within 60 days, for travel to be completed within six months. I thought this was a little weird, as I'd originally been told I'd have a year to use the free ticket. But whatever. A free ticket, right? So, after talking to Debbie, I called Dementor to book my flight for May, when the weather would be good and Debbie could get time off to play.
The Dementor representative pulled up my record over the phone and immediately informed me that I had to actually complete my travel within 60 days. I said that that was NOT what I was told, and that there must be some mistake. I believed I had six months (as opposed to the original bait-and-switch claim of one year). After some time on hold and having to ask the thickly accented Dementor rep to repeat himself again and again so I could understand him, he agreed that I could indeed plan my travel for May.
Dementor: Where would you like to fly?
Me: Hartford, please.
Dementor: [unintelligible]
Me: I beg your pardon?
Dementor: Dementor does not fly to Hartford.
Me: Um, really? Okay, is there an airport nearby where you do fly?
Dementor: [unintelligible]
Me: I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you. Would you please repeat that?
Dementor: Yes, we fly to Newark, Boston, and [I don't remember the other one or two].
Me: I'll have to check with my sister and call you back.
So, after talking to Debbie, we decided on Boston. I've never been there; it's an hour and a half from her house in Somers, and we would make a day of it in Beantown before heading to Connecticut.
When I called Dementor Airlines back to book my flight, the agent informed me that I had a very limited choice of dates to travel, because I was using a travel voucher rather than, you know, paying for a ticket. After the usual back and forth and negotiating yet another heavily-accented communication barrier, we put together a plan for me to board a Friday night red-eye from L.A. through Detroit, arriving in Boston on a Saturday morning around 9 a.m. I'd return on the following Wednesday. This would mean that my 17-year-old daughter Jennifer would have do my job of watching my grand-niece Lola all day Wednesday. She has basically shared this job with me, so handling a day solo wouldn't be that much of a stretch for her. So that was settled.
Except.... apparently my flight would cost more than the voucher I had received. I was originally told I'd get a free round-trip ticket. But now, the Dementor told me, this voucher was apparently only worth something like $350, and my flight was going to cost more than that. After a lot of back and forth, I reluctantly decided that paying only about $120 for a round-trip visit to my sister was worth it, and I forked over the extra dough.
So far, a bit of a pain, a few bait and switch hassles, but not too too bad. I mean, there's no such thing as a FREE anything, right? So I figured I had to have at least some skin in the game to see this through.
Fast forward to about a week ago. I saw some emails begin to pop up from Dementor Airlines, urging me to purchase my bags early in order to save money. Curious, I started to peruse their site for the fine print. I expected to pay for my checked bag - everyone charges for bags nowadays. What I did not expect was the dizzying labyrinth that is Dementor's luggage policy. I'm not going to visit the website to make sure I've got this absolutely accurate, because I'm most of the way through a beer while writing this. But it went something like this:
You must pay for luggage.
If you pay for your bag NOW, before you check in online, it'll be $30 per bag.
If you DON'T check in online and want to do that in person, it'll run you $10, just to check in.
If you buy your bag at the time of your online check-in, it'll be $35.
If you wait to buy your bag when you arrive at the airport, it'll be $40.
If you plan to carry more than ONE - ONE - item on the plane, which must fit into this ridiculously tiny space (something like 12"x16"x"14"), you'll have to pay $100 at the gate or the Dementors won't let you bring it on the plane.
So I thought, huh, that's kind of jerky. But whatever. Glad I opened this email. I paid $60 in advance for my one checked bag each way, and spent the next hour trying to figure out how to cram everything I needed into one tiny, tiny carry-on. But I did it. I even included an old pillow that I wouldn't mind tossing into the trash if they gave me any grief about it.
So, Thursday night, I stayed up "late" (which, on a night when I have to work the next day, is any time after 9:30) to check in to my flight online. After a few tries (their website was super busy, they said), I managed to check in and print my boarding passes.
On Friday, we headed to the airport two hours before my flight, partly to get Brian to bed at his accustomed time, and partly to allow for any unexpected complications. When I arrived at Dementor's check in line, it was a confusing mass of cattle. I asked a Dementor where I should line up to drop a bag, since I was already checked in and had my boarding pass in hand. He showed me the line. A few minutes later, he asked me my destination. When I said, "Detroit, then Boston", he said, "Oh. Detroit line is over there." So I moved, happy to see that I would be first in line.
There were two Dementor agents behind the counter, each helping customers. Then, another Dementor led a woman in a wheelchair and two daughters in front of me, and he said, "When one of these agents is done, you're next." The woman in the wheelchair looked at me apologetically and said, "I didn't know he'd put me here in front of all of you. I'm sorry." I smiled indulgently and assured her that I had plenty of time, no worries.
There was a whole lot of other chaos going on with a flight to Chicago that was leaving immediately, and two more people were directed by the Dementors to cut in front of me so they could dash to the gate before their flight left. While I was actually AT the counter with my bag on the scale, the Dementor took another Chicago-bound customer, mumbling, "The flight's delayed, so I need to take this guy first." Huh, I thought. Whose flight is delayed? I politely stepped aside and joked with the Chicago-bound passenger about the sweaty, breathless dash he was about to make to his flight.
THIS is where things really started unraveling.
When I finally got to my turn with the Dementor, he informed me that my flight to Detroit was delayed by three hours, and that I would therefore miss my connection to Boston. Aghast, I discovered my only real, rookie-level blunder in this whole process. I am a seasoned traveler, and this is honestly the first time I've ever just totally forgotten to double-check my departure time before leaving for the airport. So I'd already said good night to Debbie, who by now was fast asleep on the east coast. Brian was on his way home. It took a moment for it to sink in that I wasn't leaving tonight. The Dementor rep gave me three absolutely awful choices (including, for example, leaving at 3 p.m. the next day, having a 9 hour layover in Vegas, and arriving in Boston on Sunday at around 7 a.m.). I chose the least sucky option, which was this same exact itinerary on the following evening. With tail between my legs, I called Brian to retrieve me, and I spent the whole drive home beating myself up for having inconvenienced everyone. If I'd known about the delay earlier (and, to Dementor's credit, they HAD sent an email in the afternoon about this that I had completely missed), I could have at least warned Debbie and maybe made a plan to spend the night in Detroit with Brian's brother's family, getting to Boston a day late, but still actually, you know, getting there.
As I walked the last dog I'll ever own (he's a whole other story) on Saturday morning, Debbie offered to buy me a one-way return ticket on another airline on Thursday (a day later than I was planning on returning), so that we could all go to Boston on Wednesday. It turns out my niece Melody and her two kids had come from Pennsylvania, and we were all going to spend the day in Boston on Saturday when I arrived. But Sunday was going to be rainy, and they already had plans for celebrating one of my grand-niece's birthday, so this way we'd be able to work around Dementor's blunder. I thought I should at least first call Dementor to see whether they'd be willing to move my return flight from Wednesday to Thursday, since I was losing a day of my trip because of them.
I spent almost 40 minutes on hold before I finally reached a Dementor. He told me he'd be glad to move my return flight to Thursday, for a $125 change fee. I explained that the reason I had this ticket in the first place was because I did a favor for Dementor Airlines. I was losing a day of my vacation because of Dementor Airlines. It would cost Dementor Airlines nothing to do me this solid. After SEVERAL bouts of being put on hold, and again asking repeatedly for the Dementor to repeat himself because I could not for the life of me understand what he was saying, he announced proudly that Dementor Airlines would be glad to change my return flight to Thursday, at no charge to me, as a one-time courtesy. I thanked him and felt a little better.
Soooo, I checked my emails all day Saturday, my new departure day. I got an email around 1:00 in the afternoon, announcing that my flight departure was delayed by half an hour. But that would still give me plenty of time to make my connection. A special consolation to being home was that on Saturday, I was able to visit with my brother Bill, who had made a last-minute trip from Lake Havasu to see my sister Diana and me, so that was cool.
At 8:00, we were just getting ready to leave for the airport, and I thought I'd check one last time to make sure we were cool. Sure enough, an email arrived at that very moment in my inbox from Dementor, saying that my flight was delayed two hours, and that it would land in Detroit exactly 3 minutes after my connecting flight to Boston was supposed to leave. Awesome. I again called customer service and spent about 15 minutes on hold. The Dementor who came on this time was a woman, thickly accented, and a mumbler. I explained my whole situation, and that I'd already been through this the night before. I asked what Dementor Airlines could do for me to make sure I got to Boston by Sunday morning. She put me on hold so many times I lost count, and I had to ask her to repeat herself so many times I wanted to gouge my eyes out. She kept repeating that if I wanted to change my flight, I'd have to pay a $125 fee, and I kept telling her, in nice terms, that she was crazy if she thought I'd do that.
At one point, we had this really, really odd moment:
Dementor: [unintelligible] you called us?
Me: I'm sorry, what?
Dementor: [unintelligible] you called us?
Me: Um, yes. I called you. That's why we're on the phone right now.
She then, after mumbling her way through several repeats so I could understand her, made the declaration that I had already contacted Dementor Airlines once and negotiated a free change of itinerary to return on Thursday. She paused triumphantly, as though we were in a court of law and she had discovered some crucial new piece of info that totally exonerated Dementor Airlines from having to compensate me for the fact that they suck. By this time, Brian had come into the room. I was telling Brian, without trying to cover my voice, that I had no idea whether this Dementor was screwing around with me, or whether she just simply couldn't understand what was going on. I asked her if I could please speak with a supervisor, and she informed me that her supervisor [unintelligible blah blah blah] and that he didn't take phone calls. Brian said, "REALLY??" I said, "Well, if you don't have anyone to help me, I guess you and I need to figure this out together." After another few minutes of mumbly, unintelligible conversation with her, I handed the phone to Brian. As he very politely said, "This is Brian Philbin, Doreen's husband," the Dementor hung. Up. On. Him.
At this point, it was becoming a sport, rather than a tragedy. We decided to drive to the airport in person, figuring that I had at last reached the hill I wanted to die on. We would make our case, and they would either make this right or give me my money back. We were loaded for bear and had nothing to lose. Now, Brian does this for a living. He manages a call center for American Honda, and he KNOWS customer service. He knows what works. He knows how to get more flies with honey blah blah blah. So I was confident that if there was anything good to be salvaged from this, Brian was my man.
I got in line while Brian parked the car, and he breathlessly joined me right before my turn was up. He told me that even the bridge from the parking structure to the Dementor terminal was totally shut down, forcing him to sprint through another airline terminal to reach me.
This time, the Dementor at the counter was actually adorable, cheerful, funny, and smart. When she saw my boarding pass, she jokingly cried, "Oh No! I hoped I wouldn't see another one of you before I got out of here tonight!" Brian calmly and politely explained my history and our dilemma. He said, "I know you can put her on another airline, because that's what you did to get her home from Detroit way back when this all began. She's come here two nights in a row. She's paid her dues. It's time for you to do whatever it takes to get her to Boston tomorrow." The sweet Dementor nodded knowingly and said, "Let me call my supervisor."
While she was trying to reach her boss, we shared some playful banter. We laughed and laughed, and I thought, now we're getting somewhere! The sweet Dementor basically repeated the very thing to her supervisor that Brian had said to her, then she paused, and her eyebrows flew up, and she said, "Oh that's great! Okay, thanks!" She hung up and told me that this evening's flight, which was supposed to be hopelessly late, was now only going to be a little late. I'd still make my connection with time to spare. She told us, in a confidential tone, that the trick was to get me to Detroit. Once I was there, and not in my home city, Dementor Airlines would be more likely to bend over backwards to get me to Boston.
Now we were getting somewhere. I kissed Brian goodbye, but asked him to keep his phone by his pillow just in case. I breezed through security, but not without first noticing that they had changed the queue pattern to be more rounded, like for the cattle in "Temple Grandin". I morbidly wondered whether this line would end in a slaughterhouse. But that was just being silly. A TSA agent loved my T-shirt, that shows a T-Rex running after a stick man, with the slogan: "EXERCISE - Some motivation required".
All the TSA agents were in rare form, happy and joking and fast-moving. I headed to the gate just to be sure I knew what was what before seeking out a glass of wine to help me sleep a little. At the gate, the banner displayed that the flight was to leave at 10:25. Huh. That was even earlier than the Dementor at the check-in counter had said. So I asked the Dementor at the check-in gate what was up. He said, "Actually, the departure time is now 11:35." And immediately, the banner changed, as if by magic. I showed him my boarding passes, and he checked on my gates in Detroit. He said my arriving and departing gates were only two gates apart, and that I should still have plenty of time to make my connection. I asked when I should come back for check-in. He said, "Come back around 10:30, just to be safe." Cool. I wandered off to Gladstones and had a glass of wine and messaged Brian and Debbie that I thought we were on a roll. Out of the woods. In good shape.
Now feeling pleasantly mellow and ready for a nice flight, I bought a $4 bottle of water and returned to the giant warehouse of milling airline passengers and sat down so I could see my Dementor gate. I spent a little time editing some documents for a homeschool co-op I worked on, when suddenly, there were a bunch of overlapping, hard-to-understand announcements. Looking up, I saw that my departure time had now changed from 11:35 to 1:30 a.m. Crap. A Dementor on the intercom kept repeating that this was due to a weather issue, and therefore no fault of Dementor Airlines. No compensation would be offered, and passengers were welcome to come forward to receive refunds or to book other arrangements. I joined a huge surge of humanity at the podium and watched as victim after victim turned away from the Dementors, dispirited and resigned. What began as a couple of orderly lines gradually dissolved into a mob of increasingly angry people. There was a very sweet young man next to me (I later found out he was only 23). He saw some jackass in a three-piece suit and hat who was railing at a Dementor, and he gently suggested to the jackass that this wasn't, after all, the fault of this particular Dementor. The jackass should maybe be a little more respectful. The jackass did not at all appreciate this advice and started facing off with this young man, asking, "Are you threatening me?" The young man almost laughed and said, "Um, no. What part of that sounded like a threat?" I patted the young man on the back and said, "Don't worry. We've got your back. If he attacks you, I'll kick him in his boy parts." This amused the people around me, and fortunately, the jackass didn't hear me. He stormed off right as police officers, summoned by the now nervous Dementors, arrived.
By the way, I've read in other blogs that the Dementors not only regularly blame the weather for their own mishandling of the schedule, but that the arrival of police on the scene to calm angry mobs is far from rare.
When it was my turn, I explained my whole situation to the Dementor, telling her that if I couldn't get to Boston by a reasonable hour Sunday, I just wanted my money back. She was genuinely surprised that I had spent any of my own money on this, other than the bag fee. She said, "If they told you you would receive a voucher for a round-trip ticket, they never should have charged you any extra. You should file a complaint online and look into that. But here, we'll refund everything you've paid." She too, was sweet and apologetic.
So I dragged my luggage out to the departing flights curb once again and waited for Brian to fetch me. I just can't go through this any more. What if I insisted on getting out to Debbie's, and then I run into the same situation in Boston on my return, when I'm 90 minutes away from anyone who cares? I have officially hit my limit. Cash me out.
So the plan at this point is to try to get compensated for the entire amount of the "Free" ticket, so that at least I will have gotten something positive from this soul-sucking experience.
I know this post has been exhaustive. I welcome your comments. Too long? Should I have edited a bit more? Worth reading? Have you learned any valuable lesson from this? Like NEVER volunteer to bump yourself? NEVER, EVER fly Dementor Airlines? ALWAYS check your info before leaving for the airport?
Let me know if this was even mildly entertaining, or if you, too, now feel like a victim of the Dementor's Kiss.
