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Monday, November 27, 2006 Back at work
This is how it looked this afternoon when I got home. I left work early as I was afraid the streets would be too icy. Later on I was called if I feel like coming in tomorrow at 5 AM as Singapore Airlines did not leave today. Thank you but no thank you! [ back to top ] Thursday, November 23, 2006 Jam session 
Shane, Charles the teacher, unknown singer, Ted, and Shane again [ back to top ] Tuesday, November 21, 2006 Lake Huron 
After lunch I went down to Lake Huron, one of the five Great Lakes. [ back to top ] Saturday, November 18, 2006 9 to 5 
Left Vancouver at 9, left Toronto airport at 5. [ back to top ] Friday, November 17, 2006 Water Due to the severe storm we had on Wednesday we are on a "boiling water before drinking" alert, or trying to buy bottled water... But there is no water to be found therefore boiling it is. Ah well, I go to Toronto tomorrow. They better have enough wine! [ back to top ] Thursday, November 9, 2006 Canmore, Alberta 
I have spent the past four days on union business in Canmore, surrounded by the most breathtaking mountains. That's why it's always nice to come home again: Hi Schatzi! There is Agnolotti Pasta and "ready-sauce" in the fridge so you don't have to cook too much -- being jet-lagged and all :-) There is also some cooked chicken meat if you want to kick it up a notch. Or, if you don't want to cook at all, there is bread and the aforementioned cooked chicken and other cheese and cold-cut stuff. For dessert, the seedless Mandarin oranges are absolutely fabulously delicious. For entertainment you can enjoy Project Runway and Top Chef - both entirely commercial free. And both come with amazing twists... I'll be home by 8-ish. [ back to top ] Wednesday, November 1, 2006 Working for airlines I know how huge a company can be. Especially since there are stations and travel agents all over the world, plus the Internet all being part of the company's daily operations. We had a little incident during our summer vacation. As we did not use the outbound portion of our ticket, our entire trip was automatically cancelled. We only found out about this the night before our scheduled return journey. So we had to get another ticket in order to make it home, as there was just no way to get a hold of somebody with authority on a Saturday afternoon. We had a great and comfortable flight home with BA. Due to heightened security in London we almost missed that flight. But BA is very reliable with the flight to Vancouver being late on a regular basis. Once at home and halfway recovered from the shock of having to pay twice for our transportation, we composed a letter to Expedia.ca, our travel agency. It did not take long and they replied that we have to take it up with the carrier itself. That was the first setback. It of course is also much easier to deal with a domestic company than a foreign one. We revised the letter, copied every little scarp of paper we had as proof and sent it to the Refunds Department of Our Airline in the US. After five weeks of silence, I sent a slightly revised letter to the senior vice president of customer service. Klaus decided to go slowly up the ladder whereas I wanted to go straight to the CEO. This morning I received an email from somebody working with the VP of Customer Service. She wants to get the ticket numbers from the tickets that were cancelled in order to process our claim. Change of subject: as I got home tonight I tried to log in to my retirement account in order to see how much the damage was because of today's government announcement in regards of starting to tax income trusts. I was not able to log in probably because of everybody else having the same concerns. I then checked my bank accounts and got a real shock when scanning over the account balances. On the Visa card line it said -2,514.34. I was shocked! How the heck did that happen? I checked the account page and then of course I realized that minus is good when it comes to Visa. Minus is what you want to have! It turns out that Our Airline refunded our entire journey without questions asked. Getting back to the beginning and the almost unimaginable size a company like Our Airline must have, it is very remarkable, that this transaction went as smooth as it did. All I needed, was just a little more patience… And of course I will now just ignore the email from the other day. After all I don't want to be greedy and ask for a second refund. Bad karma! But I think by submitting the ticket numbers they would see, that a refund has been issued. Klaus thinks that a full refund must have been issued by some disgruntled employee: "They don't pay me enough here, why should I care..." Thanks guys! Here is part of the email I received from the VP's secretary. It contains a lesson for everybody travelling by plane. Although not all airlines impose those rules, as we found out the hard way on the wrong side of the Atlantic, some airlines take it seriously! Also note that this policy was not mentioned either in the Expedia fine print nor the Our Airline. I printed it all out, read it carefully and had it explained by a ticket agent. Dear Ms. Schoenwandt: Please accept my apology for the difficulty you encountered with your tickets purchased with Expedia. We're glad you took the time to write since it gives us the opportunity to respond to your concerns and to clarify some of our policies. Most airlines require that ticket coupons be used in sequence. Since the cost of a ticket can be affected by the itinerary, as well as by the date of travel, this is a necessary stipulation. I'm sorry you weren't aware of this restriction until it became an issue. Our tariff rules on round trip tickets do require that the tickets be used in order and in full. Any changes to your itinerary do require that you continue to meet the rules and restrictions of the fare in addition to paying any associated change fee and difference in fare. When a portion of the ticketed itinerary is unused our system is programmed to cancel any continuing reservations. If you do not call to cancel the reservation prior to flight time, the ticket also becomes invalidated. You may be eligible to exchange your unused tickets toward future travel or a partial refund... And one more footnote: On Thursday we received a postcard from the Refunds Department of Our Airline asking us to be patient because of the high volume of work they have at the moment. [ back to top ] |
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Running Chef 
I am not reading at the moment - too lazy...
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