Meredith's Travel Fuckery and Mercury Retrograde

A longtime reader of this blog, Meredith, has experienced an incredible amount of travel fuckery today and has graciously offered to share it with us. 

Here's the scoop: Meredith was scheduled to depart from Dulles Airport here in Northern Virginia last Thursday on a flight to Denver for a much-needed vacation and to visit relatives. Her flight was cancelled due to the 14 inches of snow that we received here. She and her husband were re-scheduled on a flight out of Dulles tonight. 

Mercury struck hard tonight, folks. When they arrived at the airport, they found out the flight to Denver had been overbooked, so they were bumped onto another flight. This one, however, was leaving tomorrow morning out of Baltimore Washington International Airport, at least an hour away from Dulles. So the airline arranged for a shuttle ride to the new airport, hotel, and dinner for them this evening. 

Unfortunately, due to computer problems printing the vouchers--the agent had to call corporate as well for assistance--it took 90 minutes to get all the paperwork in the travelers' hands. At this point you're thinking, "All's well that ends well", right?

Well, the agent couldn't print all of the vouchers at his station. Baggage claim had to print the others, including the one for the "private shuttle" that they were supposed to get. Of course, the voucher they received is for a "shared shuttle" to their destination. So they climb aboard their shared vehicle and head off to BWI. Strike two. 

But the story doesn't end there. Because it's a shared ride, there's more than just Meredith and her husband. The driver takes another passenger to the wrong hotel, and then the vehicle's GPS stops working. Strike three. At this point, Meredith is getting tired of this crap. 

I am thrilled to report that after a long and annoying journey, Meredith and her husband are safe at their hotel, hopefully enjoying dinner before their short night of rest; their flight leaves at 6:00am so they'll have to be up seriously early. 

The one benefit is that Mercury fuckery at least paid off this time. The couple received $1500 in flight vouchers, enough to cover a future trip to Denver.

Thanks for sharing, Meredith! Here's to hoping Mercury leaves you alone for the rest of the retrograde! :)