The stress of planning a last minute trip…

Expedition trips has great last minute deals on trips to Antarctica, so when I received an email on the 11-day trip “Waddell Sea – In Search of Emperor Penguins” leaving November 27th I couldn’t pass it up!  As the dates for upcoming trips approach and cabins are still available they start sending out “deals”.  Well planning a trip to Antarctica at the last minute is a bit on the stressful side… (last trip we had a year to plan) Less than two months, sure we can do this… yikes!

• Passports - good
• International flights to Buenos Aires – good, even able to use United miles to get us there in Economy Plus :^)
• Mandatory emergency evacuation insurance – good
• Hotel reservations in Buenos Aires & Ushuaia – good
• Transfers from airports to/from hotels – good
• Domestic flights from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia – not good :^( - what an adventure! 

• First I sent my planned international and domestic flights to our expedition coordinator to confirm flight schedule would work – I didn’t hear back from them right away – so I went ahead and booked the flights.  Once I heard back from them, they said the flights were good – but that our return trip they now offer flights from Ushuaia directly to the Buenos Aires International Airport.  They suggested we might want that flight in order to avoid the very complicated transfer between airports in Buenos Aires (requires about 6 hours, seriously!  We did it last time and it was horrible) 

• Well of course we would prefer that flight… now how can I cancel or get the return flight changed…  back to the Aerolineas Argentinas website… which is not really up to current web standards… Discover that they offer free cancellation within 24 hours of booking if booked more than 7 days in advance of departure – perfect! We meet those requirements… I submit the cancellation and their website comes back and says thank you – you will receive confirmation within 72 hours

• Now do I book new flights without receiving that confirmation… no I don’t think so… I’m sure I will hear back from them

• Now the expedition coordinator is telling me she really needs our required travel documents so they can generate final expedition documents… I explain I’m having a little problem with domestic flights, she then suggests that I try calling the airline.  Well I tried several times to call them and all I get “All circuits are busy – try again later” sigh…

• 72 hours comes and goes and I haven’t received any information regarding the cancellation, so I decided to call them at 6:00am – well what do you know I actually got through – only to wait on hold for 30 minutes before the agent is available to help me.  I explain that I am trying to find out if my reservation has been canceled – he said “No – the cancelation policy only applies to international flights” Hmm ok, now what to do, he asked if I would like to make a change to the existing reservation… well yes I would like to make a change to the return flight…  Ok that will be $50 per person… ok let’s do it

• Later that morning I receive an email from Aerolineas Argentinas customer service letting me know that they have received my request for cancellation and they are processing my request… Ughh!!  I immediately responded to the email saying “No, please do not cancel”

• Now I decide that I better call them again… another 30 minutes on hold and the agent tells me… I see that you made a change to your return flight at 6:30am this morning and the entire reservation was canceled 3 hours later… ugh!!!  So clearly their cancellation policy does cover domestic flights and I didn’t need to pay $100 to make the change to return flight that they ended up canceling…

• The agent asks me what I would like to do… is there a way we can cancel the cancellation?  She puts me on hold…  Comes back and tells me that they will contact the Miami office and see what can be done – what there is a Miami office!  But that office is closed now - it’s 1:30 PST what the hell time does the office close.  The agent asks if I can call back tomorrow – really!  Yes, I will call back tomorrow…

• Next day I receive an email from customer service indicating that my flights have been booked – check the documents and everything looks good, well except we don’t have seat assignments.  Well there must be a way to do this on the website – nope.  Time for another phone call, this time only 6 minutes on hold – and I get the agent that helped me at 6:30am the previous day.  I explained that I was calling to make sure everything was OK with my reservation and I needed to get seat assignments.  I gave him the booking number and he puts me on hold… uh oh – what now!  The agent gets back on the phone and says everything is good.  I can help you with your seat assignment, I have row five.  Perfect I would like the Window and Aisle – he says “I can’t do that, there are three seats in a row” “Yes, I know that”, “I can’t do that, a seat will be empty”, “Exactly, I explained this is how I booked the seats when I did it online and this is how I wanted them assigned”, I finally got him to agree!

• After almost 2 hours of on hold time I feel that my Spanish has improved, Un minuto por favor, Gracias!