I recently had to delay my travel to a customer site by a couple of weeks. Booking most of my trips through expedia, I called them and asked the agent to rebook my travel and paid the change fee. The two weeks past and it came time for me to travel back to the customer. However, when i checked the details of the flight, it was booked to return on a Saturday, instead of a Friday (which was what I had originally booked).
I doubted anything would happen, but I had to try and call expedia to see if they would correct this mistake for me. After spending a good 45 minutes on the phone talking to two agents, I lost it and started screaming at the agent, who continued to keep his calm throughout. I explained to no avail that my life had come down to my travels from Monday through Friday and that the weekends area sacred family time that I would not have made a mistake of booking. While the agent, understood, he argued that I had seen the confirmation email and had even checked on the itinerary on expedia a couple of time since the rebooking. I could not argue with this but, with all honesty, I only ever paid attention to the start date of the travel to make sure that was correct. I lost all hope and hung up on the agent when i finished my screaming……probably the worst thing i could do, but I had lost it and now had to pay money out of pocket for a mistake that I did not believe originated from me.
Then, just as all hope was lost, the unthinkable happened. The agent called me back (he had asked for my number in case we got disconnected). He said that he was not finished, and that if I was willing to hold, he would talk to the higher ups and see what he could do. I not only held on the line, but also my breath for a miracle. He came back after 8-10 minutes and said that he had reviewed my portfolio and talked to the higher ups and they were willing to get me a one way ticket back on Friday as an exception since I was a valued customer.
Unbelievable, but they made a customer for life.
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