I need to apologized for this long winded post.
Well where do I begin! We booked a flight to Saint John for Cathy and Bob's wedding using aeroplan points that when I first signed up for it was free to cash them in. Now the points expire within a year and you have to pay tax on the flight, which I don't understand since it is free, I guess everyone wants their money. The flight down was quite good I was impressed, however at the Ottawa airport I lost my coffee since I could not bring it through security since it was liquid, oh well. David really enjoyed the flight and looking at all the airplanes and telling us what color they were. He was also asking which color plane we would get on. When we landed in Saint John we waited until everyone had gotten off the plane so we would not bother anyone. So that flight was good, now upon returning from SJ we have not had much luck! We are put on a plane that only had 1 side of the airplane that could have an infant. This was the side of the plane that they put Dana and Daniel and David in one row and me in another one on the side of the plane that did not allow infants. The reason for this was the oxygen masks. I was OK with this but what comes next I was not OK with. The stewardess was mean when addressing both Dana and I. Daniel started to get fussy since it was time for supper, this was OK so Dana sent me up top to get the baby food, it had exploded since the lids of baby food don't really close properly. Well there was strawberry banana everywhere, I asked the stewardess for something to clean it up with, well apparently that really put her out since she gave me dirty look as if to say, "don't bother me". I was only trying to clean up so she would not have to. Anyway while cleaning up the strawberry banana that was all over the plane I needed to throw out the napkins I was using, apparently this pissed her off to since I got in her way again, next time I will leave it and if there are napkins covered with crap I will leave them for her to clean up.
Anyway the crappy experience did not end there, when we landed in Ottawa the luggage started coming out, Daniel's seat was the 2nd or 3rd thing out on the conveyor, followed by our 3 suit cases. I thought, awesome, we will be out of hear soon, however David's car seat never arrived. We were stuck at the airport with 2 exhaused kids at 10:20. I went over to lost luggage, and the guy told me to wait, this happens all the time and it would likely be on the next flight from Toronto. I overhead someone else saying that Air Canada loses tons of luggage, if you connect through Toronto. Apparently this was the case as the car seat did not show up for the next flight. Now it is 11:30, Daniel is asleep in Dana's arm and David is spralled out on a bench sleeping. The guy behind the counter tell me that they have loaner car seats. I thought why would you not tell me this before. Anyway I go in the back to select my loaner car seat. I would refer to these loaner seats as abandoned car seats. None of these seat were complete. Some were missing clips, some missing the belts, some were from the 80s. So after a bunch of discussions we finally decided to take the one that was the newest and closest to David's weight limit. After trying to get it in the car, the car seat did not really clip in properly so once we got home the car seat came out of the car and I was not putting it back in and David, Daniel and Daddy were stranded.
Since we bought the tickets with aeroplan points I did not think I qualify for delay luggage with my Visa, however I was not covered for a different reason. There are 2 reasons I was not covered for getting a new car seat. Number 1 was due to the fact that I am arriving home so I am not invconvenienced, beleive me I was inconveniences. Number 2 was a car seat is not considered an essential. You try to explain to me how a car seat to transport your 2 year old son is not essential. This is a joke, Why am I paying for this "gold" card if I get none of the perks of having it?
Now comes the interesting part. I get a phone call 2 days later from Air Canada saying that they found the car seat and they would be passing it on to a company called Dynamex to ship it to me. They tell me that they now consider the case closed, even though I have not got my car seat. about 2 hours before this I get a call from Dynamex stating they will be delivering my car seat sometime between 6pm and 10pm, this is quite a window. Oh well, I will be home anyway where the heck can I get I don't have a car seat. At about 11pm the door bell rings, it is Dynamex to pick up the loaner car seat which I have now put at the front door. However the interest thing was they did not have a car seat for me. The guy was surprised that he was supposed to have a car seat for me. What the heck? why are you here? Anyway he told me there would be someone coming in the morning with my car seat. Again I waited because, where and I going to go? At 3:00 in the afternoon I call Air Canada and they say the car seat has been shipped. I call Dynamex and they say the same thing. I said that is funny since I guy came by to deliver nothing to my house, they looked into it furthur and said they would have someone at my house between 6pm and 10pm. This is like a deja-vu. At 10:00 no-one has come so I call back and they tell me the truck broke down and there is another truck going to get his stuff and deliver it to me. At 11:00 I call back and I get the first useful person who works at Dynamex. He tells me they have never recieved a car seat from Air Canada and he would follow up with an email, so I asked him to copy me on it. This is finally when the ball got rolling. So I call Air Canada, every time I call them I get someone in India, perhaps they need to change their name to Air India? Anyway I talk to them about my issues and they just dismiss it. I am starting to get more annoyed. So I ask to talk to a supervisor. They go away and say the supervisor is on the phone. But he would be able to call me in a couple of hours, at 1 or 2 in the morning. I said when how about you call me at 7:00 in the morning as I would be up anyway with the kids. I have yet to recive a call from Air Canada, I guess this is what I would expect from them anyway. So the next morning the delivery guy showed up at 7:30 to deliver my car seat, well guess what when he shows up, the car seat is not the right color or type. I asked him what that was, and he said it was my car seat. I told him it was not. He asked me if I was kidding, and I said nope. He looked at the tag, and it said Mclellan, well that is not me. So he explained what had happened, and how it was his mistake that he grabbed the wrong seat when he left but he would not be able to get back to my house by 8:00 as promised since he had another delivery in Kemptville. So I got back on the compuuter and responded to the email and told them what had happened. The delivery man showed up about 1.5 hours later and he wanted to know about this email I had sent, apparently there were a whole bunch of managers on the email and he was called into a meeting later that day. I told him what I had said. When he returned he had my car seat and the sega ended. Knowing all these managers of the company was on the email thread, I thought I could get one last jab in. So I thanks the delivery guy and the disbatcher who got the ball rolling by stating they appeared to be the only people in the company that were competentant and if they were to make a mistaken they owned up to it and had it resolved in a few hours where all the other poeple I spoke with it took them 2 days and did not resolve anything. Anyway we now have our car seats and everything is back to normal.
Submitted by johnkean on Wed, 03/26/2008 - 09:30.
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kevin@haggaret.com | Sat, 03/29/2008 - 21:39
JK - let me introduce you to a tag that you may find useful - you use this tag to create a 'teaser' so you don't have to display an entire post on your front page. Simply slip it into your post where you want to cut if off and voila! Might be a good idea to try this out for posts like this one.
A good rant though. :)
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»Done!
johnkean | Mon, 03/31/2008 - 09:06
Thanks Kev!
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