Category Archives: Argentina adventure

Dear friendly United Airlines rep from Seattle… (we just sent this, will see what happens)

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Hi xxx,

I’m hoping you remember me and my wife from this morning when we checked in for our flight to Buenos Aires from Seattle at ~5:30am–we are the newlyweds (Jen and Ryan) that quit our consulting jobs recently, got married and are/were headed to Buenos Aires for the next 6 months.  You were very friendly to us and also left us your contact information, so I was hoping that maybe you could help us or at least advise us on what we should do given how poorly United handled our LAX-IAD-EZE flight.  Here is what happened:

We arrived in LAX on time at ~9am and saw on the connection board that our flight to Buenos Aires (flight 847 with one stop in Washington DC) was delayed and they were expecting it to leave at 1pm instead of 12:48pm.  Obviously a 12 minute delay is no big deal, but as we got closer to 1pm, they moved it back to 1:40, and then 2:40 and then 3:40pm.  All they told us was that an aircraft was coming in from SFO and was delayed, no other info was given despite repeated questioning by us and other passengers.  The flight from SFO finally arrived at ~3:15pm and only had a handful of united crew members and no other passengers, so this was clearly not a normal flight.

As they continued to move back the departure time, they came on the intercom once and said that they were working on connecting flights.  We were initially told that we would have no problem because we were continuing on the same flight (#847) to Buenos Aires, so we should be fine regardless of how delayed we were.  Later we were told that there was actually a plane change for the Buenos Aires portion of the flight, so they weren’t sure whether or not we’d make it and were unwilling/unable to tell us more until we arrived in Dulles.  Throughout this process, the gate agents made it fairly clear that they really didn’t care at all how things went.

When we finally landed in Dulles at ~10:25pm, they came on the intercom and said that all connections had been missed and that anyone connecting should check with customer service for overnight accommodations and rebooking.  Our flight from Dulles to Buenos Aires was scheduled to depart IAD at 10:07 under the same flight number, but apparently it left before our leg of flight 847 landed by ~15 minutes.

The customer service reps rebooked us on the only available next flight which is not until 10:07pm tomorrow night (24 hours later), gave us a hotel voucher and a $15/person meal voucher and told us that we could not get our bags back.  On top of that, they apparently didn’t call the hotel that they had booked us and all of the many other travelers who got stuck here, so after waiting outside for the shuttle, when it finally arrived we were told that there was no room and that it was the last shuttle (and the hotel is 20-30 minutes away from the airport).  So, we had to go back into the airport, wait in line again to get taxi vouchers and barely made it the hotel by midnight (which is when they stopped serving food).

So, we are now sitting in a hotel somewhere in Virginia with none of our baggage (e.g., no clean clothes) and are stuck for 24 hours with only $15 in compensation from united for a 24 hour plus delay on two ~$1250 flights.  The united reps in LAX and IAD all were completely apathetic and did not seem to care one way or another that this had happened (let alone on our honeymoon, let alone that I am a premier exec and Jen is a premier).

Suffice to say, I’m quite shocked that it has been handled this poorly.

I absolutely understand that this is not your problem at all, but am wondering if you have any advice on how we should proceed?  At this point I’m not even sure who to complain to, but it doesn’t seem appropriate that we should be stuck for this long without our baggage and forced to spend quite a bit of money on clothes/laundry and food to get us through tomorrow, does it?  Please let us know what you think and if there is anything you can do to help us, or even just advise us on who we should call or write to.  We have both been quite loyal united business travelers for a long time and this day has been absolutely horrible 🙁

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide,

Ryan and Jen

Why did the trail go to Oregon?

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Possibly another question that needs answering…

Last night we stayed in the super romantic TravelLodge in Newberg, OR.

Pure luxury

In particular, the view from our room was breathtaking:

Jealous?

But, for $48, it was actually pretty awesome.  We will be doing a complete comparison of Hotel Healdsburg, the Redding, CA Red Lion Inn, the Newberg, OR Travelodge and the East Portland Sheraton Four Points (tonight’s home) in posts to come.  I think the Travelodge may be the front runner…

We did some Oregon wine tasting today and were eager to compare it to Sonoma/Napa.  The verdict… kind of a rip-off.  $15 tasting fees for 3-4 very small tastes seems to be the norm and they don’t refund the fees if you buy wine.  Also, very new, big, fancy wineries–kind of felt like being at disneyland rather than wine country.

Also, can someone please explain this?

You can't make this up

We were just driving by, why is it our responsibility???

Stay tuned, and check out our new FAQ page:  FAQ (AKA what is this?)

Don’t forget to leave your comments!!!

Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn (say what?!)

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Sadly, we’re not staying in a Holiday Inn, but we’ve got the hotel (last night – Red Lion) and motel (Travelodge) covered so far.  Nothing but the best for our honeymoon!

We’re gaining an understanding of just how different San Francisco (and Chicago, and Boston, and Tokyo . . .) is from just about everywhere else in the country, even elsewhere in Northern California.  For example, we got into Redding last night and thought we’d go for pizza – sounds simple enough, right?

The first place we visited had strong ratings on Yelp . . . and a pizza buffet that looked like it had been sitting out since our last day of work (which was now over a week ago).  After some additional Yelp research, we decided to go big by visiting the Upper Crust – reviews that said its prices were too high but we were willing to pay up if that meant good food and a decent atmosphere.  Turns out half of that was right – food was good, as long as we weren’t run over by screaming toddlers (at least a dozen of them) running back and forth to the video game room on our way to our table.  Breakfast at IHOP wasn’t much different.  But one thing Redding has going for it – everybody was extremely friendly, even if they drive ridiculous trucks (see below; more to come in an upcoming post) and eat 2000+ calories at every meal.

The plan for today…

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Off to Oregon wine country. Any recommendations? (leave in comments)


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We also plan to write a thorough review comparing the Redding, CA Red Lion Inn to Hotel Healdsburg.  Should be interesting to see who wins.

Leave us comments if you have other suggestions for topics!

Homeless, unemployed and MARRIED (a trifecta of sorts)

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Well…

Yesterday was a big day.  The Sonoma county clerk’s office is actually pretty busy at 9:30am–who knew?

Sonoma wedding image

Just after the ceremony

We are pretty psyched about being newly married AND newly unemployed AND newly homeless–we highly recommend it.

After a day of celebrating in Healdsburg we are now headed up the coast on our eventual way to Seattle prior to flying out to Buenos Aires on Wednesday.  We’ll see if United upgrades honeymooners–Hotel Healdsburg does NOT it turns out.

Stay tuned…

Homeless and unemployed, at last

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4 days, 43 boxes and several bottles of wine later, we are at last moved out of our apartment and officially homeless – so exciting!!  When we arrived at the storage facility with our movers today and couldn’t fit all of our stuff in the allotted space, we made friends with the facility attendant by helping him furnish his apartment with our leftovers.  Guess we’ll need a new desk and bookshelves when (or if) we come back.  After a surprisingly painless walk-through with our crazy landlord, San Francisco sent us off in style – with a full-on downpour.  We’ll miss you too, SF!!

It’s been a big week – we quit our jobs, had an epic going-away party (followed by a rather debilitating hangover), packed up our apartment and crammed the material goods of our San Francisco life into a 10×11 storage cell, where it will sit patiently waiting for us for the next 6 (9? 12?) months.  And it’s not over yet – tomorrow we get married (justice of the peace style – sweet!) and then start making our way to Seattle.   But at least now that the stressful part is over and every item on the to-do list has been checked, we’re finally starting to absorb the fact that we have no responsibilities, no obligations, no restrictions.  We’re looking forward to getting used to that and wondering how our thinking might change (and how we might change) as a result.  We’ll keep you posted.