24 March 2020
Last night as I lay in bed, I decided to see what was happening with my plane reservations to Europe. It turns out that my May 1st flight from Toronto to Lisbon had disappeared. I had kind of figured this would be the case. However, the return trip on June 15 is still showing as active. In all reality I do not need a trip to from Europe to Toronto (of the Great White North) if I don’t have a trip scheduled to Europe. I note my trip was booked as a round trip fare.
Nowhere on the TAP website can there be found any kind of information as to what to do next. Nothing on the site stated if your flight is cancelled you will be refunded your money. Nothing said here is how you reschedule your flights. The website was in two words, particularly useless. Many websites during this time of crisis are proving utterly useless. Amazon has been quite robust, but everything else not so much.
Given the immensity of the problem we are facing with the Novel coronavirus I am not really irked at the websites. The world has changed in the matter of weeks. The fabric of daily life has gone from a rich colorful tapestry to a faded black and white photograph. With every cough, and ache and other symptom of being older, your nerves tense and you wonder, “Is this it?” Me, if you would listen to my opinion, I don’t think we are ever going back to the old way of doing things. I think face to face, person to person sales of everything from groceries to prepared foods is changing for good.
At this point I am sitting on the phone (9:30 minutes so far) listening to the above phrase. My thought is that I will reset my trip to cover the entire fall. Maybe I will go September 7th and stay until January 7, 2021.
All this time alone has given me time to wander around in the boxes of my past, both physically and metaphorically. Odd things have been cropping up. One that was kind of amusing was seeing the picture of my myself at the start of all four years at Michigan State. I had posted this on Facebook about eight years. Yesterday, or was it today, the evil Zuckerman empire asked if I wanted to repost this “memory.” Back when I posted it the first time, I thought time flew. Now looking back and seeing it has been eight years since the image was shared, I am so very assured time is flying at a stellar pace.
(I need to note here the Welcome to TAP message has been degrading. First the P went, it got shortened to Welcome to TA and now it is Welcome to T…. I am assuming it will get to Welcome to …. and nothing more shortly. I digress).
When I look at those pictures, I can tell you which one was the happiest picture. It is the second from the left, the one with the dark tan and the longest hair. Gosh, that picture came from the Bicentennial summer. I was just in my glory from June through mid-September that year. I tanned every day. I read every day. I went to the bars frequently. How many times I ended up at Gregory’s drinking 7 pony drafts for $1.00 American. Just look at how mellow I look in that photo.
Well after 45 minutes the TAP representative answered. He was very polite and precise. He explained I could change my tickets without any problem for a flight later in the year. The gist, and we had a little bit of a communication breakdown here, was that the first leg had to start by December 31, 2020. I am not sure but I think the travel also has to end by December 31, 2020. In the alternative I could get a voucher. This could be used at any point within a year.
I asked the gentleman to transfer me to reservations. He was very clear his screen would not let him do that. He could tell me my first flight was cancelled, but beyond that, Nada. He assured me he would. I heard the line transfer; I heard the phone pick up and then wait for it, I heard dead air. Looking at my phone the clock had quit ticking. Disconnected, aggh. I tried to call back. I got into some weird queue with no music and not indication the line would ever be answered. Fifteen minutes of that and I hung up. I will try again later tonight.
Ah to be young again, with a tan in a bar with seven pony beers sitting in front of me.
No comments:
Post a Comment