Oh my word!!!

Today has honestly been one of the worst days of travel I've ever had (and as you know, I've been fortunate to have travelled quite a bit for both work and pleasure).

I rarely write negative things, but today has been such a catastrophe that my journal / blog wouldn't be accurate without these details!

Everything started off swimmingly with my lovely sister picking me up at 3:10am to drop me off at the coach station for our 3:30am departure.

All went well on both the coach and flight one of our three flights to getting to Quito....

So, dear reader, what went wrong.....?!

Well, everything (and I really do mean everything) took a deep nosedive upon arriving in Washington.

Our 3hr layover turned into 6.5hrs as our flight to Houston was delayed by an hour. That wouldn't have been a problem usually but this meant we would miss our connecting flight to Quito and resulted in a number of frustrating and lengthly discussions with United Airline staff.....

Once we were advised of the delay we queued to speak with what can only be described as the most inept and 'can't give a dam' Customer Services representatives I've ever met.

The first one ignored us after we explained our situation and started a conversation with a colleague who had just arrived ....."oh Felicia, so good to see you girl..... Yes my daughter went straight through...... The last customer service woman who sat in your chair nearly got cussed out by a customer.....(cue yet another rep joining in this conversation....)

"Seriously" I thought, wtf?! "Stop your jibba jabber and sort out our flights lady!"

She then palmed us off to another representative under the guise that this woman was far better at finding alternative flights as she was having difficulty.

Brilliant we thought! We have the ticket ninja. We will be sorted in no time....

Oh how wrong we were........!

Having been told to sit down and waiting for a bit she still hadn't called us over so I went and asked her for help.

Having again explained our situation, tap tap tap goes her keyboard with no eye contact or explanation to us.

Her: "I can get you to Houston but there are no flights to Quito until tomorrow so there's no point flying you to Houston today. - Would you like me book you on that flight?"

Me: "No thank you, that would waste us a day. Please can you look for any earlier availability and ensure our luggage is taken off what was going to be our next flight"

She tap taps again and can't find out luggage

Her: "Can I please have your luggage stickers"

Me: "We weren't given any".

Her: "You've lost them?"

Me: "No. We weren't given any"

Ian: "We weren't given any. I don't have mine either. We didn't lose them, we didn't receive them".

Off she trots to apparently find them and take care of getting them off the plane..... and eventually returns.....

Tap tap tap on the keyboard....

Her: "There's a flight to Miami and that connects to Quito tomorrow morning"

Me: (in my head: whoop! finally a result...")

Her: "No, I can't do that, that flight has gone"

Me: (in my head "is she serious?!")

Her: "There's a flight to Quito via .... No, wait, I can't do that..."

Me: "I understand you are trying to help. Can we please only focus on the flights that will go to Quito and that you can get us on rather than those that wont and you can't"

Her: "Ok, so you don't want me to tell you about flights that I can't get you on?"

Me: "No thank you. Let's just focus on a solution"

(In my head I am slowly and loudly asking myself how on earth this woman ever got and retained a job).

60mins after starting our desperate bid to secure an alternative flight, even offering to spend a few days in a different country and then flying to Quito to avoid wasting time, we settled on flying to Salvador in the morning and then Quito the following evening on the understanding that we could site see in Salvador during the 8hr wait. (I asked her to check we could leave the airport before we booked!).

We reminded her again about our luggage and she placed a call to get them off the plane (wait, hadn't she done bar already when she walked off before?!).

We were exhausted by now and had no confidence as to where our luggage was so asked to collect it and we would take it with us and check in tomorrow.

Her: "Go to baggage reclaim and it will be there".

Blah blah blah, hotel for the night confirmed and two $10 vouchers for dinner and breakfast later (oh yes, $10 for a dinner in Washington!!!!!) we head off to pick up our luggage.

Baggage reclaim area:

Queue, queue. Head rub head rub.

Me : " excuse me, can we please collect our luggage"

Baggage rep: "sure, where are your luggage stickers..."

(Bah, wtf wtf, grrr, humph boom!)

Me: "we were never given any". Bag description given, flight itineraries shared.....

BR:" I need to make a call. I'll be back"

She goes. She returns.

BR: " Good news!"

Me: (in my head - whoop! finally some good news!)

BR: "Your bags are on their way to El Salvador".

Me: "How come? We specifically asked for them back so we could repack.

BR: "I don't know. I'm sorry. But they will be in El Salvador when you arrive tomorrow".

Now to be fair, she was a lovely lady and even found our luggage numbers and wrote them down for us, so we had confidence that our bags were indeed going to El Salvador and once we caught our flight tomorrow all would be well.

How wrong we were!

Tune in for the next instalment of "united airlines travel trauma...!"

Dun dun dun.....!