Pyrrhic Victory

Many of you may already be aware of the US Airways debacle surrounding our vacation last February. I would recount details, but the stress of such a tale-telling would, to this day, leave me relatively incapacitated for the remainder of the afternoon, and thus I will resist. Safe to say, it was the stuff of epics, and also the stuff to make us avidly anti-US Airways for the rest of our lives. And we are not anti-anything. But our experience was enough to demonstrate that this company has a system-wide problem with customer service, efficiency, luggage handling, and in some cases, very basic common sense. Enough, lest I become incapacitated...

At any rate, after much much to-do, we were sent a pair of vouchers, which after careful inspection of the terms and conditions, we decided to use them in January to visit friends and family. The result was not surprising, given our past experiences, but still deflating. Due to hidden stipulations included nowhere in the fine print, our flight plan was apparently not allowed with a voucher. Two trips to Detroit Metro Airport and close to 2 hours on the phone with Customer Relations (again), we have made our final victory, though it be only a Pyrrhic one. The tickets are in our hands, and seriously, it feels like a huge burden has been lifted. Maybe we shouldn't let this stress us so much, but the fact of really bad business practices just really bothers us. Oh well, there's still a bunch of other fine choices in the airline business.