Alright, TACV Sucks
So earlier this week, I get up at a god-awful hour in order to haul my butt to São Filipe. I need to pick up plane tickets for the upcoming COS conference, and drop off some stuff at the house there. I get to TACV (the national airline) office a bit after eight in the AM and there is already an old guy sitting at the desk and another man on the couches (as a side note, this is the same immigrant from Boston who, when meeting me and Monkey Bar in Mosteiros, after staring at me for a while and after hearing me say to him “I was born in Minneapolis” still asked, “what nationality are you?”) who I ignore since I don’t want my IQ to go down anymore.
So we sit. The woman behind the desk is shuffling papers and I figure since it’s an old guy, he is planning a big trip to Boston and pull out my book and ignore them. I end up reading and waiting for an hour and a half as the two (and I hesitate when using these terms) ‘customer service reps’ sit at their desks, seemingly only to push paper around. The other lady is outright ignoring people and just working on old tickets. This is despite the fact that people are coming in and out, looking annoyed, etc etc.
As my watch crawls toward 9:30 and I cannot believe that I have wasted an hour and a half of my life in this office, I finally overhear people talking and saying that power has been out the entire time! Well, thanks a lot for saying something! I mean, obliviously my powers of deduction have taken a hit since I should have noticed that neither of them were using their computers or anything, but there was enough shuffling of papers to make me think some business was being transacted.
But would it have been that difficult to make a little announcement that the power is out, so that people aren’t just sitting around wondering what is going on? Is that so unreasonable? But really, from these two ladies, who aren’t exactly paradigms of service, you cannot expect much. I used to hate coming to the TACV office because the two of them are generally unfriendly and not helpful. Even Idealist, who can usually get along with most people noted that these ladies aren’t fun to deal with.
But eventually, I made it to a desk, and after the lady ignored what I said and told me there were no seats available on the flight that PC had already booked me tickets on, I was able to get it all taken care of.
Then I pulled out a ticket that I had bought a year ago that I ended up never using. Because the ticket was good for a year, when I tried returning it the first time, the manager said not to bother, that I could just use it later. But now, I am not allowed to leave site before I go, so I have no use for the ticket, which I tried to exchange for the full 10,000$00 ESC that I paid for it. However, the lady said that I could only get 4,000$00 ESC back. I went to talk to the manager, and argued that since he was the one who didn’t want to refund my money when I came around last year, that even though the rules had changed, that wasn’t my problem. It would have been one thing if I didn’t use the ticket and didn’t ask him about it and just came in this week asking for my money back. However, since he told me to keep it, I’m now out 6,000$00 ESC because the rules changed and he can’t do anything about it? I almost ripped up the ticket and threw it into his face, and really wish that I had, since it would have made me feel so nice.
However, now, I’ve come up with a possible way that will a) allow me to get all of my money back and b) piss off the people at the TACV office. Of course, I just think I’m smarter than they are, they’ll probably still shoot me down, but we’ll see.
So we sit. The woman behind the desk is shuffling papers and I figure since it’s an old guy, he is planning a big trip to Boston and pull out my book and ignore them. I end up reading and waiting for an hour and a half as the two (and I hesitate when using these terms) ‘customer service reps’ sit at their desks, seemingly only to push paper around. The other lady is outright ignoring people and just working on old tickets. This is despite the fact that people are coming in and out, looking annoyed, etc etc.
As my watch crawls toward 9:30 and I cannot believe that I have wasted an hour and a half of my life in this office, I finally overhear people talking and saying that power has been out the entire time! Well, thanks a lot for saying something! I mean, obliviously my powers of deduction have taken a hit since I should have noticed that neither of them were using their computers or anything, but there was enough shuffling of papers to make me think some business was being transacted.
But would it have been that difficult to make a little announcement that the power is out, so that people aren’t just sitting around wondering what is going on? Is that so unreasonable? But really, from these two ladies, who aren’t exactly paradigms of service, you cannot expect much. I used to hate coming to the TACV office because the two of them are generally unfriendly and not helpful. Even Idealist, who can usually get along with most people noted that these ladies aren’t fun to deal with.
But eventually, I made it to a desk, and after the lady ignored what I said and told me there were no seats available on the flight that PC had already booked me tickets on, I was able to get it all taken care of.
Then I pulled out a ticket that I had bought a year ago that I ended up never using. Because the ticket was good for a year, when I tried returning it the first time, the manager said not to bother, that I could just use it later. But now, I am not allowed to leave site before I go, so I have no use for the ticket, which I tried to exchange for the full 10,000$00 ESC that I paid for it. However, the lady said that I could only get 4,000$00 ESC back. I went to talk to the manager, and argued that since he was the one who didn’t want to refund my money when I came around last year, that even though the rules had changed, that wasn’t my problem. It would have been one thing if I didn’t use the ticket and didn’t ask him about it and just came in this week asking for my money back. However, since he told me to keep it, I’m now out 6,000$00 ESC because the rules changed and he can’t do anything about it? I almost ripped up the ticket and threw it into his face, and really wish that I had, since it would have made me feel so nice.
However, now, I’ve come up with a possible way that will a) allow me to get all of my money back and b) piss off the people at the TACV office. Of course, I just think I’m smarter than they are, they’ll probably still shoot me down, but we’ll see.
posted by jende turtle at 4:55 AM
3 Comments:
oh yes! This is the same airline that made me go all the way to Paris (from Sweden) to buy tickets at their office. And when I got there, they announced "we don't speak English" even before my French interpreter managed to open her French mouth.
I hate TACV so much that my groin hurts!
Yes, well, that's also probably because of the French snootyness too!
But they were supposed to be CVians, not French. Now I hate them even more.
And how will you get your money back? I want to know your evil plan..
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