Posted by Kevin Hanson | Posted in Travel, United | Posted on 22-03-2010-05-2008
2
I don’t love pretzels. In fact, I somewhat dislike them. Most airlines stopped the peanuts due to the allergy craze, which seems to have come out of nowhere, and now they all serve pretzels. Lucky for me, my air carrier of choice serves a “premium snack mix.” I grabbed one at the RCC and stuffed it into my bag for a late night snack when I got to the hotel. Much to my chagrin, I opened it up and could only find pretzels! I dug through… still only pretzels! I decided to dump the bag out to see just how many pretzels were in there. Take a look at the pic below! Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Kevin Hanson | Posted in Travel, United | Posted on 18-03-2010-05-2008
0
Just my luck… My business travel landed me a BOS-SFO flight on March 19, 2010, the day United Airlines is set to roll out unlimited domestic upgrades. While I suspected that flights on the 19th would be completely messed up, from an IT systems perspective , I had some hope reserved that United might use the time leading up to March 19th to properly prepare their systems for this. Oh silly me! Here’s my timeline…
I booked the ticket a few weeks ago, and I tried to use a confirmed regional upgrade to upgrade it instantly.
A couple days ago, I realized it hadn’t cleared early, so I called and had them remove the confirmed regional upgrade instrument, and instead put me on the UDU waitlist. The agent on the phone was a bit confused about how that would work. She spoke to her manager and then assured me that if she put me on the e-500 list, I would be automatically moved to the UDU list upon check-in. Cool.
I try to check-in online this morning, hoping to either confirm or waitlist my upgrade with UDU. No cigar. It wanted me to buy e-500s. Annoying.
I called UA three times this afternoon, each time speaking to a different agent, and being extremely polite, to try and see if they could figure it out to me.
The third agent didn’t want to talk to me so she quickly transferred me to “Web Support.” This means India. They told me they had “fixed” the problem. I checked my itinerary… Apparently fixing the problem means they pulled me off the upgrade waitlist. FANTASTIC. Now I would have to call again to get re-placed on the list, and my post on the queue would be lost.
I called an agent and had her waitlist me for the ugprade. She did. She advised me to check in after midnight.
Now it’s 12:36AM, officially March 19, and I’m trying to check-in. I get the screenshot I pasted above. How retarded is it that on the day United is phasing out e-500s, they’re actually trying to sell me some? To make matters more / less funny (depending on your perspective), I get the link to buy e-500s when I click on the “Unlimited Domestic Upgrades Now Available to Elite Members” link.
So do I try to call them again? Every agent has been useless thus far. Do I really think I’ll get a helpful one this time around? I guess it can’t hurt… I’ll give a call once more. This has been an awful experience, though, and I really see no excuse for it. They knew this was coming LONG ago.
UPDATE: They almost got it working… I tried again. This time it gave me the screenshot after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Kevin Hanson | Posted in Marriott, Travel | Posted on 04-03-2010-05-2008
0
My girlfriend and I did a long weekend in Hawaii: 2 nights at the JW Ihilani and 2 nights at the Marriott Waikiki Beach. On top of it being a great weekend, we were fortunate enough to be there for the tsunami scare. I won’t recap the whole story for you. Check out here, here, and here if you need background. So while the tsunami (or lack thereof) kept us confined to our 24th floor hotel room and resulted in no result whatsoever, we got some pretty cool footage of what Waikiki Beach, one of the ten most popular beaches in the world, looks like without a a single person on the beach. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing to see.
I put together some video footage above, and I have a few full-size images below to download or view. Enjoy!
Posted by Kevin Hanson | Posted in Travel | Posted on 04-03-2010-05-2008
0
I really like flying Virgin America. I think it’s a great in-flight experience. Frequent fliers can do much better with traditional legacy carriers, but if you don’t fly that often, I think Virgin America is a GREAT way to travel. They had one thing that really annoyed me, though. Elevate (their frequent flier) points would expire 18 months after they were given to you. That means even if you flew Virgin America like a madman for 18 months, you might still not get enough points for a single first class award ticket cross country, and the earlier points you earned would expire the next month. Once I figured that out, I stopped flying them. As of today, they’re changing their ways! I just got an e-mail from Virgin America, letting me know that my points will now expire 18 months after the last activity (just like United’s). So now every time I fly, my expiration date gets pushed out another 18 months. Nice job, Virgin America. This was a much needed change to your frequent flier program.
Posted by Kevin Hanson | Posted in Technology, TiVo | Posted on 03-03-2010-05-2008
2
Picture courtesy of TiVo.com
I recently posted that one of my bigger disappointments of CES 2010 was TiVo’s lack of announcements. It appears that TiVo didn’t want to share the spotlight with other electronics manufacturers, and yesterday they released the TiVo Premiere and TiVo Premiere XL. I won’t go through all the details here, but you can find plenty of info here, here, here, and here. I’m a diehard TiVo snob so I ordered one right away! TiVo offers some great deals for existing users. If you have a lifetime service on one of your DVRs, you can get a $200 discount on the lifetime service from TiVo for the new box. Click “Read More” to see screenshots of what they’re offering. The new DVRs will be shipping in early April, and I’ll be SURE to post my impressions once it arrives!
Posted by Kevin Hanson | Posted in Travel, United | Posted on 01-03-2010-05-2008
0
$15 for WiFI?! Are you kidding me? I thought $12.95 was steep, but $14.95 really stinks! I’m writing this post from UA 14 Premium Service SFO-JFK on March 1, 2010. I think they just raised their rates today, March 1. The funny thing is that I just played the GoGo game to get a free internet session here. It gave me a FREE internet session up to $12.95 value. I wonder if it will work on the $14.95 United P.S. flights. I’ll try it next time. Anyhow, I think $10 is a fair price to pay for cross-country WiFi. $12.95 seemed steep, and 14.95 really seems bad. I hope people use it less. I guess they just count on business users to not care and expense it.
