Loca loca loca...flight catastrophe

Booking a flight is a pretty simple process, right? If you don’t remember my aggravation with Despegar (the travelocity of Latin America) last week, the story gets worse. One would think that once you book a flight, receive a confirmation email with a PDF file with your ticket, and see the payment go through on your credit card statement, that you were fine. Not in South America.

Jordin, Stacey, Elizabeth and I all booked the same flight on Despegar to get to the waterfalls of Iguazu. Sidenote: Despegar is all in Spanish, the site does not translate into English (to our knowledge). Elizabeth never got a confirmation email because of credit card emails, but we were certain we would all make it there. Excited to find a printer at our hotel in Montevideo, we printed our tickets. Then Stacey (of course, it was Stacey) had an email from an hour before saying “Due to lack of response, your flight has been cancelled.” What didn’t she respond to? The confirmation email? That says not to respond? We were frightened. Why would it happen to her and not the rest of us? Same flight, booked around the same time, all US residents, etc. Holding back from a fit of rage, we asked the hotel concierge if there was a Despegar office around, and one was conveniently located four blocks away.

So much for our last afternoon touring Montevideo. We ran into the building and told the woman about Stacey’s situation to see how we could change it. After taking our names and email addresses, we were told that we were at a travel agency that only sells tickets and does not work with customers. Whoops. But we were upset yet determined Americans, so out of pity, they continued. Carolina, the travel agent, confirmed that Stacey’s flight was cancelled but couldn’t do anymore except book a new flight through her agency. She helped us by getting a man from Despegar (upstairs, where they have an office of three employees) to continue assisting us.

The next downfall of this plan was that Despegar is based in each Latin American country, and our flights were booked through Despegar-Argentina, not Despegar-Uruguay. All HE could do was call the Argentina location and do the same thing we could…except in more proficient Spanish with flight confirmation numbers. So we took him up on this offer, as he checked each of the four confirmation numbers to figure out why Stacey’s got cancelled. First, he looked at me and said my flight was cancelled too, and I hadn’t even gotten an email that said so!! Thanks Despegar! Jordin’s was issued and perfectly fine, gosh forbid she have any bad luck for booking after us. Elizabeth, who hadn’t even received a confirmation, had the same: a nice flight waiting. Stacey and I were furious.

It turned out that when we booked the flights, we clicked ARGENTINA on the home page because our flight, you know, was IN Argentina. The “tarifas,” or costs for flights, are automatically in that country’s money for ONLY that country’s residents on Despegar. So we would have had to have clicked USA to get costs in American dollars. Therefore, Jordin & Elizabeth have to pay 300 more pesos to get the increased price for Americans (thanks again Despegar), but Stacey and I didn’t even have that option, and still have no idea why.

This was all discovered through our friend Pablo, the agent for Despegar-Uruguay, Belén, a Despegar representative who speaks broken English, and Marsiela, the same. I’m already pretty direct with businesses when I don’t get what I ordered, so you can only imagine my Spanish and Spanglish arguments over the phone when I not only don’t have a flight, but have been charged for one, and STILL haven’t been informed that it’s been cancelled. We’ve spoken too much English amongst ourselves this week in Uruguay so my brain was fried from 2½ hours of Spanish correspondence over rescheduling flights—something that’s equally difficult in English.

Who is to blame here?

• 74%- Despegar- for cancelling a flight without informing us, waiting a week to do it after sending the ticket, not being available in person, etc.
• 16%- Us for not clicking USA for being residents there and getting the right cost
• 10%- The information age. If we would have not brought our computers on this trip like we planned and never gotten this email, we would have gotten to the airport and probably gotten on the exact same flight, just paid there because of the original tickets’ cancellation. But I don’t have that kind of spontaneity and always must look ahead. Was this 2 ½ hours wasted? Not exactly, but it explained what exactly was going on. One day, people that do have that spontaneity and don’t want to know what the actual reasons were will get in trouble when the flight is full or not available. So curiosity (and you know, safety and confirmation) not only killed the cat as the old phrase says, but our brains as well.

I feel so bad for the travel agents that don’t deal with customers that THEY spent that much time helping US communicate with Despegar-Argentina. We sent Pablo a thank you email for his assistance.

My phone-nagging skills discovered that Jordin & Elizabeth are paying exactly 300 pesos more for the US tarifas/costs, and that there are 9 seats left on our original plane. So Stacey and I will hopefully be buying them directly through the airline instead of Despegar, when we get back from Uruguay. The employee even advised us to do that. Pretty odd recommendation to make from a business perspective.

What did this teach us? You can’t be frustrated at such situations in a foreign country, because they happen outside of your control. We can still be spontaneous and book a flight the old-fashioned way at the airport when we get there, even if it leaves in 12 hours. I won’t feel satisfied until the ticket is in my hand and I am checking onto the flight. On the plus side, it also taught us that we could figure out this issue in fluent Spanish.

Iguazu, here we come…maybe?

UPDATE (10:49 PM EST)- Stacey and I bought tickets ida y vuelta (round trip) at the LAN booth at the airport! And we're taking a later flight home so we get more time to see the waterfalls/cataratas of Iguazu in our 80 DEGREE WEATHER! I get a summer...what?

My credit card was not charged for a Despegar ticket, the one that I already printed, but I STILL have not received an email canceling my reservation. I love reputable South American companies!

Stacey and I holding our flight confirmation in hand. Never been happier.