Booking my flights

I booked our flights VERY last minute. Probably about 12 hours before we actually flew! I didn’t really look at the return flight, just saw that it came back on the 8^th (which was exactly 3 weeks, and I couldn’t stay later because I had to come back for our permission to stay appointment). I turns out it was a pretty annoying flight. Vancouver to Calgary (Westjet) - 3 hour layover, Calgary to Amsterdam (KLM) – 5 hour layover, Amsterdam to Rome (KLM).

After I got to Canada, and looked over that itinerary, I decided to see if I could fly Westjet Abbotsford to Calgary instead. I called Westjet, and was told to leave my phone number and I would get called back in the same order as if I stayed on the line. That’s an awesome system, because then I can do stuff without having a phone stuck to my ear! Anyways, after talking to them, I was told that because I booked on the KLM website, there was nothing they could do for me. So I called KLM. Had to wait on hold for awhile, finally got through, and was told that my tickets allowed NO changes at all.

While I had been waiting, I went onto the Westjet website and saw that they had a seatsale from Abbotsford to Calgary on for that day. I asked the KLM lady again, if there was any way she could switch my westjet flight to that one, and she said no…so I said I would just go ahead and book it and just pay for that extra flight then, I wasn’t very happy. That was the end of that call.

I was very happy with my decision to book that flight, it was an extra $117 but we calculated that it would save me 3 hours travel time! The flight from Van was scheduled for 1pm, while the flight from Abbotsford was at 1:50pm. Also, it would take WAY less time to get to the Abby airport, getting to the Van one you have to leave really early in case there’s an accident or anything.

Anyways, my flights was Friday, on Wednesday night my brother Kevin (a more seasoned traveler than myself) highly recommended that I call KLM again and officially cancel the Van to Calgary leg, so that I wouldn’t have any problems in Calgary getting on my flight. I called and was put on hold for a LONG time. I told the lady why I wanted to change (that I had booked last minute to go back for a funeral, and that I was traveling alone with a 1 year old and wanted to make the journey a bit easier) after being on hold for an HOUR she told me, without any apologies, that I could not cancel the Vancouver to Calgary flight. AND if I wasn’t on that flight, I could not get on the KLM flight in Calgary! I almost cried – and since she was very unapologetic with me, I said, “Fine, goodbye” and hung up as she was talking.

I can’t believe how inflexible they were – given my situation. I then had to call westjet and cancel THAT flight – I had some problems getting through (which is apparently very common with westjet) and because of that they are being VERY good with their customers. They couldn’t refund the flight back to my credit card, but they put the full credit in a travel bank for me, which I can use within a year (and my brother said that it wasn’t too hard to have that transferred to a different name, since I probably won’t be able to use it).