Back in Ottawa
So I have finally made it back to Ottawa. No help from Air Canada. Rather then rewriting the story I share with you my email to Air Canada:
While attempting to check in at the Edmonton airport for a flight to Ottawa the flight was canceled due to fog. After waiting in line for a fifteen minutes, I got the counter and the Air Canada Staff was very rude and unhelpful. His name was XXXXX, he was working on station 44 at 1130. While attempting to sort out my possible options, I had my mother on the phone. She happens to be a travel agent, and has been for over 30 years. She was trying to help me out by giving me some flights to ask about and the Air Canada Staff told me “You can deal with her or you can deal with me, and I am the only one who can do anything for you so you should hangup on her” This was very rude. He then continued to treat me with absolute disrespect and didn’t even make an attempt to get me on a flight today or explain the options available to me. I was able to get my flight changed to tomorrow morning instead. After having dealt with him I called my mother again and she told me that while I was at the airport I should get my seat assigned. While waiting in line again to do this, I was able to observe this staff treating other customers in a completely different manner and getting them on flights later in the afternoon for the same day. Once I got to the front of the line again, I was helped by a different staff who had trouble assigning me a seat because she had difficulty in locating the rebooked flight and assigning me. She eventually did confirm my seat 29D and I thought that everything would be fine. However when I went to the kiosk to check in for the flight as I was within the 24 hour time frame I could not. By this time the lines were very long and I opted to leave the airport and try to check in later in the day. When we tried later today we still could not access the reservation so we called Air Canada and after 30 minutes on hold spoke to a very helpful agent who advised that the reason we could not access the reservation was because the ticket had not been reissued. This means an even earlier departure tomorrow morning so that I can stand in line once again to have my ticket issued, when at my first visit to the counter my reservation should have been changed, ticket issued and seat assigned in one transaction in a courteous and efficient manner.
So that was my Monday afternoon. Thankfully my Tuesday flight was a lot less eventful, in fact it was very smooth sailing, if you could sail on clouds. I had an empty seat next to me and a nice Carleton girl in the other seat. Once in Ottawa I made the decision that food was more important then catching an hour of my class. Of course to continue my luck it was pouring rain when I came out of the grocery store. But I had a nice evening of Californication (an entry on its own…later) and an early sleep to get ready for the semester ahead.
