I find ethics to be very important, and that means I haven't tried to monetize this blog that way others might. It would be too much of a conflict of interest.
That reality made me think hard about what I could do, so I created Cranky Concierge air travel assistance. This business has done very well and that has allowed me to keep writing the blog. Every so often, we come across a problem with a client that I think is worth telling publicly. That's what you'll find in this section.
When you buy a ticket, it’s not always easy to find out all the fare rules that apply, but it’s really important you do. We had a Cranky Concierge client recently who had an emergency,
and Air Canada didn’t want to honor its own rules. Worse than that, not one …
It’s pretty rare that a post in this series ends up being a happy, feel-good story and I thought it was time to change that. So cozy up by the fire with a warm cup of cocoa on this Christmas Eve while I tell you a tale about an unhappy …
Lufthansa is probably the most hated airline in the travel agent world these days for a variety of reasons. It just started charging a surcharge for those who book through travel agent systems, first of all. But it’s also the random and never-ending strikes that have shaken confidence. I, however, …
If you were traveling in the eastern half of the country last week, you know what a mess it was. The weather caused problems from Dallas all the way to New York. In particular, Thursday was a real mess. It was one of our busiest days at Cranky Concierge thanks …
This is not the first time that I’ve ranted about British Airways’ customer service skills (or lack thereof), and it certainly won’t be the last. For an airline that I think does a good job in the air, it’s amazing that it does such a terrible job on the …
I have a very strange Tales From the Field post this week. What’s so odd about it? It doesn’t involve me fighting an airline. In fact, this is a positive post about United. Seriously.
I’ve already ranted about the annoying increase in the number of schedule changes airlines inflict upon …
It’s time for another Cranky Concierge client story, and this one is ugly. It’s a long read, so let me sum it up for you. We had clients going from Mumbai to Toronto. The first flight was canceled, then they were involuntarily bumped twice and given no compensation. United Customer …
We all know how terrible the weather was to start the year, and of course, that meant an incredibly busy time for Cranky Concierge. We were able to help a lot of people get home earlier than they could have done on their own, and that made for some …
We were faced with quite the dilemma this week at Cranky Concierge when we had a client flying Southwest who was looking at a possible missed connection. This required us to make a judgment call and hope that it worked out right. It’s puzzles like these that I find most …
Remember my post on Wednesday about United’s reservation system not being very friendly? Well there were some people at United who were very concerned that this could be an unknown error and they wanted to get to the bottom of it so it didn’t happen again. After doing some …
[Update 9/27 @ 1049a: After much research, it turns out the problem lies with US Airways not United. I posted an apology to United here.]
I decided to put up a special Wednesday post this week, because it dove-tailed so well with yesterday’s post about United resurrecting the …
British Airways is kind of a funny airline. I really like flying the airline, and I think the crews do a great job onboard. But from a travel agent perspective, BA can be a pretty tough airline to deal with. We found this out once again with a frequent client …
