I thought an interesting point of the article was that the customer wasn’t entirely blameless and the article said as much. Read her situation a couple more times over.
This person arrived to check in at 11:30 PM and intended to catch a 6 AM flight the next day. So their original plan involved only sleeping from around 11:45PM to 4:30AM assuming they were right next to the airport.
This is a complaint about missing out on less than 5 hours of sleep in the first place.
Here’s the real issue: her itinerary wasn’t realistic to begin with, and she was never going to be properly rested regardless of her possession of a hotel room.
You can’t catch a friend’s wedding on Saturday night and then expect to make your husband’s family reunion in a whole different state on Sunday without some major fatiguing circumstances.
Arguably, Booking upheld their end of the bargain by refunding the hotel. This is all they’re obligated to do. No other type of business gives you any more than that.
Sure, Booking had crappy ineffective customer service. What else is new with the corporate world? Even if they had a perfect concierge level process they physically couldn’t accommodate the customer’s needs because they can’t materialize vacant rooms.
Every minute wasted in this situation defeats the purpose of a hotel room in the first place (I.e., she could have gotten a room further from the airport but that would have eaten up travel time that would have netted her 2 hours of sleep instead of 4, because of her own bad itinerary. If she could check in at an earlier hour this wouldn’t be a problem).
When your flight gets canceled, you aren’t owed another flight at the same date/time. I’m not sure what kind of emergency service anyone would expect to receive from a business like this. At no point was she in tangible danger, and this entire experience was a piece of inconvenience that was essentially self-inflicted.
> When your flight gets canceled, you aren’t owed another flight at the same date/time.
No, but you are owed another flight in a reasonable timeframe. The airline doesn't get to give you your money back and say "we've upheld the end of our bargain" and leave you stranded. I'd argue that Booking (and friends) have a similar obligation not to leave you homeless in a city you're probably unfamiliar with. In fact, the article itself claims that it's standard policy for Booking to find you alternate accomodations and that their rep (allegedly) screwed up.
> At no point was she in tangible danger
She was a 5-month pregnant woman who found herself without a roof in front of an NY homeless shelter at (almost) midnight with no place to go. She may not have been in actual danger, but that's pretty high on the "unsafe" scale.
You actually aren’t owed anything for a canceled flight beyond a refund. Rebooking is a courtesy provided by the airline. They are not legally obligated to do it.
The only time you are owed anything in addition to a refund is in the case of being bumped due to overbooking.
Her situation was high on perceived danger. You said so yourself. She wasn’t in any tangible danger, it’s best described as discomfort.
Being in front of a homeless shelter is not a permanent affliction. You can just…not be in front of it.
…Which is what she did. She got an Uber to the airport. She wasn’t stranded. She didn’t have “no place to go.” Even though the airport was closed for the time being, I’m sure she could have found a 24/7 diner to kill some time. It’s New York, there are establishments open.
But as soon as someone says “stranded in the big city” our minds wander over to getting mugged or getting initiated into a gang or something like that.
Sure, but having more time in the first place would have opened up more options for alternative lodging. If you’ve only got 5 hours then you basically have to stay at a hotel within spitting distance of the airport, and that severely limits your options if something goes wrong.
One of those options would be to find a hotel elsewhere in NYC. If her check-in time was more like 9PM that would have been entirely reasonable.
The golden rule of travel is “shit happens” and that’s why you run a risk of all kinds of issues when you run a tight itinerary. When that shit happens, correctly assigning fault doesn’t tend to change one’s predicament.
If I had a weekend with a family reunion and a friend’s wedding in two different cities I would personally just pick one.
This person arrived to check in at 11:30 PM and intended to catch a 6 AM flight the next day. So their original plan involved only sleeping from around 11:45PM to 4:30AM assuming they were right next to the airport.
This is a complaint about missing out on less than 5 hours of sleep in the first place.
Here’s the real issue: her itinerary wasn’t realistic to begin with, and she was never going to be properly rested regardless of her possession of a hotel room.
You can’t catch a friend’s wedding on Saturday night and then expect to make your husband’s family reunion in a whole different state on Sunday without some major fatiguing circumstances.
Arguably, Booking upheld their end of the bargain by refunding the hotel. This is all they’re obligated to do. No other type of business gives you any more than that.
Sure, Booking had crappy ineffective customer service. What else is new with the corporate world? Even if they had a perfect concierge level process they physically couldn’t accommodate the customer’s needs because they can’t materialize vacant rooms.
Every minute wasted in this situation defeats the purpose of a hotel room in the first place (I.e., she could have gotten a room further from the airport but that would have eaten up travel time that would have netted her 2 hours of sleep instead of 4, because of her own bad itinerary. If she could check in at an earlier hour this wouldn’t be a problem).
When your flight gets canceled, you aren’t owed another flight at the same date/time. I’m not sure what kind of emergency service anyone would expect to receive from a business like this. At no point was she in tangible danger, and this entire experience was a piece of inconvenience that was essentially self-inflicted.