Wednesday, May 23, 2007

I must be tired; it’s the only reason I’m so incredibly angry over what happened at the security checkpoint yesterday as I went to board my flight from Calgary to San Francisco.

A little background. I have bad teeth. (Hang in there with me; this is relevant.) I brush and floss like a madman to avoid another root canal, and have four cleanings per year instead of the usual two. I also rinse with a pre-brushing dental rinse (Plax, usually), all of which is designed to keep my teeth reasonably healthy. Now, Plax does not make a bottle that is 3 ounces or under; at least, I haven’t been able to find one. So, in order to be able to rinse before brushing when I travel, I bought a 3-ounce container from The Container Store and pour some Plax into that. That little plastic bottle goes into my Ziploc baggie. I have shown it at least 100 times, including my entries into and out of Canada. This includes my entry into Canada through SFO on Monday, my transfer from Calgary to Regina, and my trip back to Calgary from Regina.

Yet in Calgary, the Canada Air Transport Security Authority officer tossed my bottle of Plax. Why? It was not labeled by the manufacturer. Thumbs down, in this case, to CATSA.

Excuse me? Here is the exact language from the CATSA website:

Passengers will be permitted to bring liquids, gels and aerosols through security screening at Canadian airports provided that the items are packaged in containers with a capacity of 100 ml / 100 grams (3.4 oz) or less, and that the containers fit comfortably in one clear, closed and resealable plastic bag with a capacity of no more than 1 litre (1 quart). The approximate dimensions of a one litre/quart bag are 15.24 cm by 22.86 cm (6 in. by 9 in.) or 20 cm by 17.5 cm (8 in. by 7 in.). One bag per passenger will be permitted.

See anything there about the product needing to be in original manufacturer packaging? No, I didn’t either.

But, hey, I was entering the U.S., so I figured it may be a new regulation from the TSA. But no, here’s the language from the TSA website:

With certain exceptions for prescription and over-the-counter medicines, baby formula and breast milk, and other essential liquids, gels, and aerosols, the following rules apply to all liquids, gels, and aerosols you want to carry through a security checkpoint.

All liquids, gels and aerosols must be in three-ounce or smaller containers. Larger containers that are half-full or toothpaste tubes rolled up are not allowed. Each container must be three ounces or smaller.
All liquids, gels and aerosols must be placed in a single, quart-size, zip-top, clear plastic bag. Gallon size bags or bags that are not zip-top such as fold-over sandwich bags are not allowed. Each traveler can use only one, quart-size, zip-top, clear plastic bag.
Each traveler must remove their quart-sized plastic, zip-top bag from their carry-on and place it in a bin or on the conveyor belt for X-ray screening. X-raying separately will allow TSA security officers to more easily examine the declared items.

Again, not a word about original packaging or labeling being required.

When I tried to ask about this, the CATSA officer dismissed me, just tossed my bottle in the trash, turned around, and walked away. And no, they weren’t busy at security.

I have no objection to security requirements. I have expressed sympathy to TSA officers after hearing them take verbal abuse from passengers for doing their job. Any search of my luggage any security officer wants to conduct is aces with me—after all, if they’re checking me, they’ll check the bad guys, too.

But between the exercise of an arbitrary rule that does not exist (at least, is not communicated) and the rudeness displayed by the CATSA officer, I am still exercised about this a full day later. Protecting my safety is great. Making up rules and behaving like a martinet is not.

Of course, I’ll retract every word if someone can show me a rule or regulation that I missed.

Posted by Shel in • Airports
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Monday, May 21, 2007

I got a courtesy email yesterday from United Airlines reminding me I could check in online for my flight this morning to Canada. So I clicked the link in the email and completed all the required information, got a screen asking me to confirm details (e.g., my passport number), then clicked to get my boarding pass but got this instead:

EasyCheck-in: Unavailable
Check-in is experiencing problems at this time which are preventing you from using the system. Please try again later. 

So I tried again later. And again later. And again even later. And again this morning. Same result. (Insanity, Einstein said, is repeating the same action over and over again while expecting a different result.)

I have two questions for United:

1. How long does it take a big company like yours to fix a website problem?
2. Why can’t you let us know the site isn’t working before we go through the hassle of entering all the information rather than making us input all the data in order to find out it’s all been an exercise in futility?

Posted by Shel in • Planes
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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

I’ve been booking my flights on Orbitz for a few years, but after this morning, I’m going to become a loyal Expedia user—at least until Expedia screws up the way Orbitz did. Here’s the story.

Yesterday, I had to change my destination of my flight today. It was less than 24 hours before my flight—I called with the change at about 2 p.m. for a flight the next morning at 8:25 a.m. It took a while, but my credit card was charged nearly $300 for the change and I received a confirmation from the Orbitz agent who “helped” me.

I got to the airport early (thank God) only to find out I couldn’t check in at the automated terminal. When I talked to a ticket agent, she spent a confused five minutes with her computer, then told me I had to call Orbitz; they owned the reservation. So I did. What ensued was nearly an hour of frustration punctuated by about eight promises that things owuld only take five-to-10 minutes. Near the end of the call—most of it on hold—I was told I was going to be connected to the American Airlines representative.

“I’m going to miss my flight,” I said.

“You won’t miss your flight,” he promised.

“There’s a line for boarding passes and a security line and we board in 10 minutes,” I said.

“We’ll get you out on the next flight.”

I was put on hold again, then the American rep came on the line.

“Are you the Orbitz rep’s supervisor?” she asked.

“No, I’m the passenger.”

“What? I was waiting to talk to the Orbitz guy’s supervisor.” She had no idea what to do with me. “I’m with a group that works just with travel agents,” she told me. At this point, my flight was boarding in 10 minutes and I had no boarding pass. I went back to the ticket desk and two very helpful American ticket agents worked through the issue and got me my boarding passes. They explained that the original change was entered incorrectly by the Orbitz agent I called yesterday.

This is inexcusable. This should have been done right the first time, or at least caught before I showed up at the airport. If I hadn’t arrived early, I would have been hosed.

American rocks—at least, the two ticket agents who took the time to help me without ever losing their smiles rock. Orbitz, on the other hand, needs some serious attention paid to quality control.

Posted by Shel in • Airports • Online travel services
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Thursday, December 07, 2006

The fact that I have an affinity card with Park ‘N Fly means that it’s in my own self-interest to park there. It doesn’t take much to get free days, and free off-airport parking is something I can always use. It doesn’t mean I like Park ‘N Fly, though. At least, not at San Francisco International Airport.

For a while, I thought it was just bad timing, but after several years, I’ve come to accept that Park ‘N Fly sends its shuttles around to pick up arriving passengers about 50% less frequently than its competitors. I can see two or three shuttles from Park SFO, Anza, PCA, and several other parking lots before one Park ‘N Fly shows up. Coming home from Montreal the other day, I called for pickup (it was after midnight) while I was still in the terminal. “Three to five minutes,” the attendant told me. I got out to the curb and waited 15 minutes and called back. “Thirty seconds,” I was told this time. Five minutes later, the driver showed up.

I sat down and said nothing, but the other guy who’d been waiting was seething. He expressed whaqt I was thinking: “I’ve seen your competitors’ shuttles go by three or four times. What took you so long?” The driver gave a song and dance about a passenger on his last run who had lost his ticket—which tells the drive the row and slot where the passenger parked—so they had to drive around looking for his car.

That may explain the delay on Tuesday night. It doesn’t explain the 75 or 80 other times I’ve waited at the blue-and-white striped curb for Park ‘N Fly to finally get around to making a run.

Maybe it’s not worth the free points. Next time, it’s probably going to be Park SFO for me.

Posted by Shel in • Airports
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Friday, November 17, 2006

I was delighted to get an email from John Wolf, senior director of media relations for Marriott International, in response to my complaint about getting poker ads served up on web pages (including my own blog) while using the Superclick service that hotels like Marriott use to provide guests with Internet access. This occurred while I was staying at the Renaissance in downtown Toronto, both in my room and in the meeting room where I was presenting a workshop. These ads showed up despite the fact that I was paying for the service, and Ragan Communications was paying for access during the two-day session I was teaching.

John’s email first of all noted that Marriott follows my blog, which by itself puts them head and shoulders above most companies. They recognize that customers will talk about their experiences—good and bad—on their blogs. He then explained the circumstances that led to my getting those annoying ads:

Marriott’s relationship with the Internet service provider Superclick includes an agreement to exclude all popups on our high-speed service.  However, Superclick explained to us that whenever upgrades are made to the system, pop ups are automatically activated and need to be manually turned off.  Apparently, we got upgraded and were unaware of it until you notified our front desk.  At that time, we notified Superclick and the pop ups were immediately turned off.  We are talking with Superclick to ensure that they alert us about all future upgrades.

John apologized, expressing regret for the inconvenience, and assured me Marriott is taking steps to ensure there is no repeat of the experience.

If I thought companies would pay attention to blogs, I would simply articulate my complaint and wait for a reply. But you can’t make that assumption (although now I can about Marriott). I like the idea, originally broached by Christopher Carfi in response to one of my earlier posts, that companies assign every product and service a tag that customers could use when posting items about their experiences, making it easy for companies to track what customers are saying about them—and to respond.

In the meantime, Marriott is back on my “good guys” list.

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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Monday, November 13, 2006

I’m at the Renaissance Toronto Hotel Downtown, and until a few minutes ago, I was pleased with the hotel. I was upgraded due to my Marriott Rewards status to a nice split-level suite that overlooks an empty SkyDome. The food is good. The service is good. However, I am now disgusted with the hotel, and with Marriott in general. Here’s the story:

I noticed earlier that spam-like banner ads were showing up in my browser. I would navigate to a page that I knew had no ads, and one would appear anyway, mostly touting online poker. Curious, I clicked on over to my own blog, and the same ad showed up there (see image below).

I assumed I had picked up some adware. Since the laptop is new, I haven’t had a chance to install spyware/adware software, so I paid for AdAware Pro and ran it. The ads kept showing up. A little investigation determined that all these ads link to a company called Superclick. I visited their site and learned more than I wanted to, enough to get my blood boiling. Superclick provides a guest interface for hotels that includes in-room services, which is fine. But it’s also dishing up these ads. So anybody staying at a property using Superclick who visits my blog will see an ad associated with it. I would never take advertising from an online poker site, and if I did, I’d expect to get some of the revenues.

Instead, I’m paying $12.95 per day to see these ads.

That’s right; that’s what the internet connection costs.

The graphic below is from the Superclick site, listing presumably satisfied customers. Before I book a reservation at any hotel in any of these chains, I will ask if the broadband connection for which they will charge me is going to serve up any ads I don’t want to see. If the answer is yet, I’ll book elsewhere. I’ll stay at a freaking Motel 6 before I put up with this kind of crap.

Unbelievable. Talk about a lack of respect—even outright contempt—for your customer.

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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Tuesday, September 26, 2006

$12.95 per day for high-speed access in your hotel room is outrageous enough, but it surpasses outrage when the “high-speed” access is more comparable to the speeds obtained through a 56.6 kbps modem.  Yet that’s what I’m paying here at the Eastside Marriott Hotel in New York. I just ran a speed test on the connection. In fact, my download speed was 200 kbps and my upload speed was actually better, at 246 kbps. What a promotion that would make: “Surf the web four times faster than with regular dial-up!”

What a rip-off.

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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Friday, September 22, 2006

I just checked out of the Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel in Chicago. Just before checking out, I dropped by the business center in the lobby. The most prominent thing about this business center is a sign that says, “Print boarding pass here.” Terrific, I thought; I’ll be able to save some time at the airport. So I stepped in and started typing.

An attendant stopped me: “Can I help you?”

“I want to print my boarding pass,” I said, pointing to the sign.

“There’s a charge for that,” she said.

“A charge? How much?”

“Five dollars.”

I swear, some hotels would charge you for every toilet flush if they could. Five dollars to print a boarding pass when the business center computer already has a Net connection and the cost of a single sheet of paper is a couple cents? Please. That’s just greedy. Needless to say, I opted to wait until I get to the airport to get my boarding pass. And my view of the Knickerbocker’s concern for its customers has taken a hit.

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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Monday, September 18, 2006

Some companies get online technology. Others simply frustrate their customers with it. Air Canada definitely falls into the latter category.

I’m flying Air Canada tomorrow morning to Toronto from San Francisco, so tonight I logged on to print a boarding pass. I got through all the data input and the boarding pass screen appeared. Instead of a borading pass, though, was the browser icon indicating a graphic file could not be found. Since I’m using a beta of Internet Explorer 7, I figured it was a glitch in the software, so I undid the check-in, fired up Firefox, and tried again. Same result. Again I backed out of the check-in and switched to my Mac laptop using the default Apple browser Safari. Same result.

It doesn’t do much good to let you print out a boarding pass if the boarding pass doesn’t include the, um, boarding pass. Quite a contrast to Northwest Airlines. A few weeks ago, a colleague was able to check in for his flight from his hotel room and choose a fax option that included a field for his hotel room number. Mere moments after completing the online transaction, the hotel delivered his boarding pass to his room.

Now I have to go to the airport and stand in line to print the boarding pass I should have received when I took the time to check in online. Get a clue, AC.

Posted by Shel in • Planes
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Thursday, August 24, 2006

My colleague, Tudor Williams, and I finished our work in a suburb of St. Paul and headed for the cab that was supposed to be waiting at 4:30 p.m. He showed up at 5:05 p.m., which worried me since it was raining and my US Airways flight to Phoenix (where I was connecting on to SFO) was scheduled to depart at 7 p.m. and my courtesy call from Orbitz indicated it was on time. Fortunately, there was no line at all at St. Paul security, and I got to my gate in time to find a weather delay had the flight rescheduled for 8:45 p.m.

I stood in line to find out about rebookings. I could get to Phoenix but no further, I was told; there were no later flights to San Francisco. What about through Vegas? I asked. Nope. How about flights to Oakland or San Jose? Nope. What about a Northwest flight to SFO? All oversold. Could I get my boarding pass for my new 7:05 a.m. flight the next day? Nope, you’ll have to get that in Phoenix.

So I booked a room at the Phoenix Airport Hampton Inn and headed back to a restaurant to have a beer with Tudor. Later, we strolled over to the Northwest lounge (my Priority Pass card got us in). I was able to relax a few minutes before heading back to my gate, where the new departure time was 9:45 p.m. I shrugged and headed back to the Northwest lounge, sat with Tudor (whose Northwest flight to Vancouver was scheduled to leave after midnight), then wandered back to the gate.

I decided to try one more time to get my boarding pass for Friday morning, which would let me get to the hotel as quickly as possible and get an extra 20 or 30 minutes of sleep. As I waited, I heard the agent working out a flight for the passenger in front of me—to SFO via Vegas! I asked if I could do the same and noted that I had been told no such flight was available. the agent said nothing. I thought it might be that the Vegas-SFO flight was delayed, but that wasn’t the case—it was due to depart at about midnight, so I had plenty of time to get there and make that flight.

I was lucky to get on the Vegas flight, since both computers at the gate froze up and the agent couldn’t print me a ticket. However, a ticket was awaiting me in Vegas, where the flight was (of course) delayed from Chicago. I’m sitting in the terminal now, waiting for a flight that is now due to depart at 1:50 a.m. It’ll be 5 a.m. earliest before I walk through my front door.

I should have just stayed in the hotel in Phoenix; I would have gotten home only four hours later.

Who ever said business travel is glamorous?

Posted by Shel in • Cabs • Planes
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Wednesday, August 23, 2006

My flight from SFO to Minneapolis-St. Paul yesterday—connecting in Phoenix—included two delayed flights, one delayed at both the departure and arrival end.

I arrived at SFO at 6:30 a.m. for a 9 a.m. flight. It was my first flight since the terrorist arrests in the UK, and having heard tales of long security lines and multiple checkpoints, I decided not to take any chances. As a result, I cleared security in about 20 minutes. The only difference I could see was that TSA agents were yelling, “No gels or liquids” in addition to their usual patter. I couldn’t understand why I was able to buy bottled water at a vendor inside the terminal. Agents for boarding flights were announcing, “If you’ve purchased food or beverages in the terminal, you’ll need to finish them before boarding; they’re not allowed on the plane.” However, nobody checked. It would have been ridiculously easy to slip a bottle of water in a bag and carry it on.

Anyway, had a lot of time to kill before my flight on America West...or is it US Airways...or is it America West? All the signs and announcements proclaim “America West is now US Airways,” but Orbitz pulled up America West fares, I printed my boarding pass from the America West website, and the planes are still America West-branded. The gates all say US Airways, the fllight attendants wear US Airways uniforms, and the video safety announcement is from US Airways. The merger appears to be half-assed.

In any case, at about 8:40, with the plane at the gate, no agents had arrived to board the flight. I toddled on over to another gate and asked. “Oh,” the flight attendant said, “I heard on the radio that flight is delayed, so there are no agents at the gate.”

“Nobody has said anything to the passengers,” I noted.

“Well, that’s because the agents haven’t come to the gate,” she replied. I just stared at her until she said, “I guess we ought to change the time on the board and make an announcement.”

“I guess,” I said.

Fortunately (funny how that makes perfect sense), my flight from Phoenix to Minneapolis was also delayed half an hour. So when we arrived in Minnesota, our gate was occupied. By the time the gate cleared and we could taxi, though, we found we had to spend another 45 minutes sitting there because President Bush, who was in town for some political something-or-other, was ready to leave and Air Force One was getting geared up for departure.

This is my first business trip in a few months. I’d nearly forgotten how much fun it is.

Posted by Shel in • Airports • Planes
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This blog has been silent a long time, which may lead some to believe it has been abandoned. In fact, I have just been lucky enough to spend a nice, long block of time off the road. But my calendar is virtually full of travel between now and the end of November, so you can expect a substantial number of posts in the months ahead. 

Posted by Shel in • General
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Monday, July 03, 2006

Sheraton Hotels & Resorts has relaunched its website with social networking features, providing space for travelers to share stories, tips, and pictures related to their travel experiences. An article on Eye for Travel quotes Sheraton marketing veep Chad Weitzig: “Our new site reflects the way people shop and research travel today.”

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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Tuesday, May 16, 2006

I spent 15 minutes this morning standing by the shoe shine stand downstairs at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, right under the sign that listed the stand’s hours beginning at 8 a.m. When I finally went upstairs to find out what was going on, I was told that the stand opened at 9. “He’s an independent contractor and he changed his hours,” I was told. Fine. Change you freakin’ sign. This came just hours after I went downstairs to the gift shop that was open until 11 p.m. At 10:40, it was closed. I was able to get the hotel to open it up again, but sheesh. Posted hours should stand for something more than an estimate when customers count on them.

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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Wednesday, April 26, 2006

What does “high speed” mean to you? For the $11 or so per day the Chicago Hyatt Regency for high-speed access, I expect it to be, well, high speed. Trying to make Skype calls from my hotel room with the ethernet cable jacked in, I got audio I could barely translate. It wasn’t any better listening to my voice on the other end of the line, according to my wife.

So I ran a speed test using a local Chicago server, and found I was getting downloads of 100 kbps. For $11-plus dollars. That’s an outrage. I also have to record the podcast tomorrow morning using Skype, but the operator assures me I should be fine because in the morning, fewer people will be online. Having said that, she also suggested I try the WiFi instead of the ethernet line.

If a miracle doesn’t occur and I find myself with healthy download speeds in the range of at least 4-5 Mbs when the morning rolls around, I’ll be asking for my money back. 100 kbps I can get by using my Treo 650 cell phone’s Bluetooth connectivity.

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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