yonmei

02:40 pm: To Americans: Please, remember who your REAL enemy is...
Years ago, when I was guest speaker at an LGBT TUC meeting on repealing Section 28 in England and Wales, one of the delegates got up and fulminated about how "We must remember - our real enemy is the Labour Party!"

I am not a Labour Party member. I am not a safe Labour Party voter. I dislike many of the things the Labour Government have done. But in this particular instance, repealing Section 28 was something the Labour Party wanted to do, and it was their opponents - Conservatives in the House of Lords - who were stopping them.

Which I pointed out, next time I got the microphone.

I just saw a post on my friends-list by someone saying how if the "wrong candidate" won the nomination she was going to vote for a third party, and spouting a whole load of media BS why the "wrong candidate" was wrong. It is of course entirely possible that she lives somewhere where her vote won't matter: protest votes are valid.

But no matter what the media has been saying about Hillary Clinton - and, since 1992 at least, they've been saying a hell of a lot and all of it bad: she has 16 years of misogynistic anti-Hillary and anti-Clinton campaigning against her - she is not the enemy. Nor is Barack Obama, though since public misogyny is more acceptable than public racism, the attacks on him for being black have seemed more subtle than the attacks on Clinton for being a woman.

The past eight years have been bad enough. I want the Democratic nominee to win by a landslide, because past experience has shown that this is the only way round the Republicans vote-rigging the elections.

The thought of waking up to another 8 years of Republican disaster because enough Americans were conned into thinking they couldn't stand Clinton or couldn't stand Obama so they'll help to get McCain in?

You do not know how much that makes me feel like the kind of dreary exhaustion you feel after vomiting for an hour and there's nothing left to come up but your stomach is still roiling.

So if you support the other Democratic nominee, and are making sickening noises about how you're not going to vote for the other one? Unless you live in an absolutely secure Democratic state where you know your vote will make no difference, kindly think of the rest of the world which will be stuck with your country's President for another eight years.

You want another eight years? I may vomit.

Tags: evil american politics, gah

10:41 pm: Ugh.
( More Easyjet venting )

Tags: buying things i don't need, easyjet are flying pigs, gah, howls of rage, travel, venting

01:44 pm: Easyjet: Pigs with wings
Easyjet always offers three days when you book: the day you said you wanted to travel and a day either side, so that you can opt for a cheaper price, if there is one.

We wanted to fly out on the 7th, so I searched on the 7th. Options for 6th and 8th came up, but I paid not too much attention to them (they weren't substantially cheaper or more expensive). Had discussion with Ajay about when to fly back. Opted for Friday.

More discussion. Stuck with Friday. Paid.

Somehow, Tuesday 6th got booked.

I'm willing to assume that somehow I changed it, though not intentionally: I don't recall doing anything to the dates of the flight out. First I noticed that we were now on the 6th was when the final confirmation page arrived, which said in large unfriendly letters TUESDAY 6th MAY.

No means of changing it immediately were offered. No contact phone number showed up when I clicked on "Contact Us". I tried to search on "what happens if a mistake was made in your booking" and got nowhere. If your question is not answered, they said, e-mail and we'll respond within 24 hours.

So I e-mailed. This would have been close to 1am Thursday morning, or Wednesday night, whichever way you count it. Easyjet had my landline, my mobile number, and my e-mail address.

When no one had tried to contact me by e-mail or mobile (cannot say for landline, but if they did ring, they left no message) I called Easyjet, using my google-fu to find a list of phone numbers via Cheapflights, which also provided instructions on how to get through to an actual human operator. Cost of call, 10p a minute. Length of call, about 20 minutes - I was left on hold twice, once for about 5 minutes. Operator, very pleasantly, tried to convince me that Easyjet's method of concealing their phone number from customers was actually very helpful: what you do, she said, is go to the search box which appears on the bottom of the page or on the Contact Us page and type in the keyword telephone. Then a page with telephone contact details appears. I cannot say I find this explanation particularly convincing: however, FWIW, I know now.

But, she said, you're saying a mistake was made when you booked. You e-mailed us, and we'd expect you to phone us right away if something like that happened. (See discussion about how Easyjet conceals its phone number.) It says on your record page that someone tried to contact you. (I assured her that no one had.) It shouldn't say anyone will contact you within 24 hours, because we're very busy right now. Then she put me on hold - having assured me that she did believe me when I said I had no reason to change from the default day to the day previous - and spoke to her supervisor (this was the five minute hold, 50p). No, her supervisor said, they wouldn't waive the change-of-flight charges: £17.50 per passenger, £35 in all. (Nicely calculated: I checked. It is just cheaper to pay these swingeing charges than it is to book another flight.) No, she said, when I asked, they wouldn't even reduce the change-of-flight charges by half. (Another hold, though a shorter one.)

She was very apologetic and nice about it, but it's a useful reminder - since the last time something like this happened to me (that time it was BMI) that airlines regard customer service as something their customers provide to them. Be helpful to a customer booking 4 months in advance when the Easyjet website makes it easy for them to book the wrong date? Don't be silly: charge them £35. Respond within 24 hours to explain? Don't be silly: just add to the customer page that you have contacted them, and assume she won't be able to prove otherwise. Publish your telephone number on the website so that when someone in a hurry clicks on Contact Us they find it? Don't be silly: make sure it's as difficult as possible to find, so that a customer can be told "you should have contacted us sooner, by phone - the information was available!" Sure. In best Beware of the Leopard style, it was available. Easyjet easyjet easyjet bastards.

(BMI used to run an early morning flight Heathrow to Edinburgh. If you wanted a vegetarian breakfast, it had to be booked 48 hours in advance, and if another vegetarian on the flight who hadn't booked a vegie breakfast claimed yours because they were sitting a few rows ahead of you, that was just too bad: the BMI flight attendant was not allowed to apologize. (After a while I just used to get on the plane and go to sleep: regard it as a non-food flight, which effectively it was if you didn't eat bacon.) Then there was the American airline that didn't provide enough drinking water to the passengers on a transAtlantic flight: I thought I was coming down with something by the time I landed in Boston, being unfamiliar with the symptoms of dehydration, but as soon as I'd had a drink I was fine. Then... Oh well. To airlines, we're crops for harvesting, not customers. Bah. And the worst of it is: I can see I really have no option other than to swallow the fees.)

Tags: buying things i don't need, easyjet are flying pigs, gah, howls of rage, travel, venting