January 16, 2005
20 cents for a flight change?
Posted by Jess in
Geek Humor
In trying to amend my mistake of leaving Thursday from Lotusphere, I decided to try and get a new flight out on Friday instead.
Southwest.com made it easy, and by the way, if you are in the Northeast, they are still running their $50/one way special.
Well, $50.20. But that's just on Friday, apparently.
At least that's what I found when I went to reconcile the ticket differences on checkout of changing my order online. I owed them a whopping $0.20. I had to put it on my AMEX.
Doesn't it cost a vendor about $.30 per transaction to allow a credit card to be used? Did Southwest Airlines just lose $0.10?
If I were management, I would at least make an executive decision that if the act of using the card would cost me money, I would say let's waive the fee. What's to gain? A happy customer. What's to lose? $0.10, at a minimum. Multiply that by at least one hundred other people, and they’ve just lost a thousand dollars.
And they wonder why the airline industry isn't doing well?
Now, here's the REAL kicker. It sure doesn't help matters to have something like this happen, and to be a programmer to boot (as usual, pun very much intended).
In fact, I'm sure I'm thinking the same thing you are right now.
"Just one line of code!!! One line!"
And thanks, Ed, for suggesting I write about it. :-)
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as a way to get even, be sure to ask for an extra bag of peanuts :)
lol, I can't be too bitter, I love Southwest. The flight attendants have been given full permission to razz, harass, and tease the passengers to make for a cheery flight for everyone.
As my friend Bill knows all too well, after teasing the flight attendant. She leaned over to him and said, "Bill, what's your last name? We are having a small problem with luggage." He answered. In the next 10 minutes, the intercom said, "Bill , please raise your hand and turn your attendant button on."
He did as he was told. The attendant then proceeded to say, "Your mother called. She said you left your spiderman underroos at home, and wanted to know if she could send them via post?"
:-D
And, they surprised me and Matt with a bottle of champagne. When booking the tickets for our honeymoon, Matt had engaged the ticket person in conversation about the occasion, and she must have flagged it in the system.
It seems to me I remember a post by Jess recently talking about her aversion to math. No offense Jess, but it shows. $0.10 times about 100 people is about $10 not $1,000 (I had to double check on a calculator before I posted this ;)). But I realize that is not the point. The fact is it was a waste of money for everyone except for AMEX. I mean, even if it was a wash, wouldn't it be refreshing for a screen to pop up saying, "You owe $0.30, but we'll let ya slide this time." As you said, SW loses nothing but gains a happy and maybe even entertained customer who may share his or her experience with someone else who may just want to try it for themselfs.
I too enjoy the fun that the flight attendents are allowed to have with the passengers, and I've seen that they are carefull not to annoy or offend anyone.
Good catch! And yes, you *were* warned. ;-)
The funny thing is, I checked it on the calculator just to be sure, and it came out correct. More often than not, my math is correct, but my equation is wrong. Kind of like the following sentence:
"Were is the plain?" instead of "where is the plane?" They would both pass the spell check, but that's as far as it's correct technically.
And that's a great idea about the notification. Okay, two lines of code then. :-D
