Schedule changes can happen with any airline, for numerous reasons. And trust me, it isn’t beneficial for the airlines to cancel any route because they subsequently lose revenue when passengers accept the full refund of the ticket they originally booked. Not to mention the hardship it places on their customer service agents when they get callers annoyed that their vacation was ruined.

Many ‘deceptive practices’ of airlines are not deceptive at all, in fact any airline you choose to use will openly communicate their policies in their COC on their websites, or when you call, you get a run down of the basic policies (normally) by an automated voice that most choose not to listen too while waiting on an actual agent. People shouldn’t blame any company, not just airlines, but credit card companies, retailers or anyone, when they choose not to read the small print that is almost always available to them in one form or another.

And yes, there are schedule changes where the airlines actually lose money, because the flight you originally booked isn’t worth half as much as the one they now have to re protect you on because a route was changed or cancelled. The airline cannot request that you pay a difference in the fares, even though it would be extremely beneficial to them.

But, if they did that, they would have even more people claiming airlines are terrible and impose awful policies on people. The bottom line is, people still CHOOSE to fly, even though there are a number of other means of transportation available to everyone.

This argument is just as absurd as people who get upset when they booked a ticket, the price goes down, and they want a refund for the difference.

That’s the thing, Alex. It so happens many people don’t know, much more care, how these things go and just want…results.

Of course, if the customer doesn’t care, it can give the business a reason not to care either. It depends on the situation, though.

We were thinking of flying from here (RSW) to Syracuse for my brother’s Jubilee celebration (50 years a Jesuit) April 18th. If we go, it won’t be on JetBlue. I hate to fly anyway; this just gives me another excuse to avoid the trip. I was thinking about caving in and booking though. This just strengthens my resolve.

Assuming the tickets would still be available at a cheaper price for the flight he was assigned, I would assume he could have gotten a full refund and then booked the tickets, right? What prevented him from doing so?

Airlines are a business. Only a certain amount of seats have a specific cheap price. Once those are gone, then it goes to the next highest price… we all know how that works, right?

The fact is that Mr. Sorg made a a choice when he booked the earlier flight. Technically, even though there is an inconvenience factor with the canceled flight, he is getting to his final destination within a reasonable time, not two or 3 days later, just a couple of hours late.

Now, there is a service factor that the airline needs to consider. And they have. They issue vouchers to the Sorg family for each passenger. Even though it is not the $100 they could have originally saved, it is a choice they made and they have to own their decision and accept the consequences.

I did have a seat with a non-working video TV and JetBlue did issue me an automatic voucher and credit. So what else could I have asked for? A $25 voucher for not being able to watch TV for 2 hours is more than my monthly cable bill. So I was happy with that. And I did have my book handy anyway so I was able to read instead of flipping trough channels for 2 hours.

But it’s wrong in the sense that JetBlue failed to appreciate this parent’s perspective.

That probably depends on what one means by “appreciate”, although I’m sure JetBlue understands Mr. Sorg’s perspective. They happen to not agree with it, though they’ve tried to “compensate” for that.

Like Carver said, Mr. Sorg ought to have asked JetBlue to refund for the schedule change and book the other flight. But that’s assuming the other flight was still lower that time.

There’s another dilemma, though: in my dealings with various airlines, they flatly stated they don’t refund if their schedule changes are less than four hours. I don’t relish being the bearer of bad news to the customer if/when that happens, and we try to compensate.

I don’t recall if JetBlue has that similar policy. But it can be quite distasteful if they do for flight schedule changes that disrupt their passengers’ plans.

If it were me I might just decide to go to war with JetBlue on this. Doesn’t matter if they were within their rights as defined by the Contract of Carriage. Let’s see what happens when you plead your case in the court of public opinion.

It’s the one court that customers can win in regularly. In the court of public opinion, Jury Nullification is often the rule not the exception. If it were me I might like to test the evidence.

Writing to the company is but one tool in this customers tool bag.

There ia a technique known as “The e-Mail Carpet Bomb” that says once I have the naming convention of their e-mail, I go to the web page and make a list of everyone VP and above and e-mail them.

Then there is always the letter ot our old friend “Aunt DOT” as in the Department of Transportation.

Next is use of the internet blogs like this one. This may be the best one but it for sure isn’t the only one. Post Early, Post Often.

Another interesting move is to file a consumer fraud complaint with your states Attorney General. The increased “Understanding” this can generate with your travel provider is in a word amazing.

Still annoyed? Small Claims court is always an interesting way to grab a company’s attention and possibly their money. To be really effective you need to snag a bank account number of your offending provider because in many states once you win (Usually by default) the judge enters the Judgment and if you have the information they can reach right into a company’s bank account and you get paid quick fast and in a hurry and there isn’t a whole lot they can do about it. Bigger beauty of it is a company like Jet Blue isn’t going to dispatch an attorney to BUF to appear for a $100 claim so in many cases you don’t even have to be right. Also remember to only accept cash.

Enough people start standing up to these airline rules and nicking the airlines a few hundred here and a few hundred there you’ll see their attitude change. Until then if you want customer service go to Helen Waite.

I’d be curious to know some examples. To date, the airline contracts are the worse ones that I’ve seen

Besides that, this contract of carriage stuff is crap. It wouldn’t fly (no pub intended) in any other industry.