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I feel mean, or rather I was feeling mean. When I heard about the newly married couple stranded in Germany because Expedia.com told them they wouldn't need visas for Russia; I couldn't help pondering Americans and international travel and lack of awareness. I just couldn't. I've been traveling since I was a baby and there's a hard edge of privilege there of 'How could you not double check that???!'. It's possibly also blended with "America is Not Rome!" and also "Are you a Commonwealth citizen? No. Is Russia a Commonwealth nation? No. Then WTF?"
But I felt much less mean when I heard that once the whole hullabaloo fermented, Expedia compounded matters by not switching their tickets over to any other destination, refusing them emergency visa assistance that was within their power to do and only paying a third of their overnight hotel stay while things were sorted out.
So many thoughts in my head, chief of which is 'always get a name'. It can be difficult to remember, I know, because for many things it won't much matter. But someone stating in an authoritative manner their expertise on a subject where you know nothing - demands writing down a name and the time and date of the call.
The other thought in my head the more I thought about things? Expedia's greed. Booking a flight to a country that requires a visa, without knowing whether or not the customers have the visa and then making that booking nonrefundable? That's not customer service. That's a con game.
Somehow or the other business practices have forgotten the concept of the repeat loyal customer and just go for "fleece 'em while they're standing still" as if the customer base is so huge, the market so big, that it doesn't matter how many people they piss off and cheat, there are more newbies waiting in the wings. This business practice seems even more irrational to me in this age of iPhone, Twitter, Facebook & Blogs. A company's name can get out there, and gain a disreputable notoriety in a matter of hours, given the right organized base. Who is actually big enough to withstand that? I mean if even Amazon went "Oh crap, we just shot ourselves in the foot with a lavender gun"; Can Expedia really afford to have twenty-somethings associating them with horrible trips, international abandonment & strandedness and mean officials who make brides cry?
Really?
That's their marketing plan?
ETA: My mother just mentioned how in countries outside of the US, one can't even get a ticket bought (to the US) without proof of a US Visa.
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