The Honeymoon That Wasn’t

Baltimore isn’t in Virginia, morons.

Baltimore is not close enough to Dulles, even on Christmas Eve when the freeways are empty, to make an international flight. Our Priceline itinerary was wrong and our flight was about to depart from an airport in an entirely different state. No honeymoon for us.

If Twitter had existed in 2005, I wonder if the outcome would have been different. Knowing my proclivity to complain loudly on social media channels when I experience poor customer service, my tweet would have looked something like this:

@Virgin Atlantic Botched honeymoon bc Priceline issued wrong itinerary & ticket agent refusing to waive $100 change fee. Can you help?

@Priceline.com When we booked our honeymoon, you issued an itinerary from BWI to Heathrow. Flight actually leaves from Dulles, so we missed our flight. Can you help? Refund our money.

I would have found their Facebook pages and written about the whole emotionally exhausting experience. But Twitter didn’t exist yet. I wasn’t on Facebook. Did companies have MySpace profiles?

Here’s what happened:

We booked our honeymoon to London for December, after classes and exams were over, instead of going right after our wedding in August. We chose London because we had both fallen in love with the country while studying abroad there but hadn’t had the chance to visit together. We used Priceline to book our package, which included airfare on Virgin Atlantic from Baltimore to Heathrow and 7 days hotel.

On Christmas Eve, we drove to Baltimore and arrived at the airport three hours before our flight. We parked in long-term parking and took the shuttle to the nearly empty international terminal. Guess what? Virgin Atlantic does not fly to Heathrow from Baltimore. Our Priceline printout clearly said BWI. But in actuality we were booked on a flight on Virgin Atlantic leaving from Dulles.

I got on the phone, calling Priceline, calling Virgin Atlantic, while we raced (as fast as an airport shuttle can go) back to our car, paid the parking garage fee, and drove as fast as we could to Dulles. It was Christmas Eve. The roads were practically empty. Virgin Atlantic promised that we would be able to make our flight, that they would make a note on the computer to let the ticket agent know we were on our way.

We got to Dulles and parked in short-term parking, running to the ticket counter. It was an hour and a half before our flight was scheduled to leave.

Dulles Airport has a strict two-hour rule. The ticket agent would not issue our boarding passes. I was sobbing. My husband was on the phone with Priceline but they were insisting it was our fault, even though they were clearly in the wrong. The ticket agent told us that while Virgin Atlantic did not fly on Christmas, he could issue new tickets for us for Boxing Day for a change fee of $100 each. Once we got there, we would have two less days at the pre-paid hotel. As poor graduate students, we did not have an extra $200. The honeymoon had been paid for with wedding cash.

Priceline continued to insist it was our fault and that there was nothing they could do. I called my parents, weeping into the phone. This long-awaited honeymoon was not happening and our money was down the drain, or on a plane, boarding the flight to Heathrow as we stood in the airport. “Now boarding…,” we heard them call over the speakers. We were standing in the airport as our plane boarded, everyone refusing the help.

I had just finished my first semester as a 2L in law school. I wrote a strongly worded letter to Visa, enclosing documentation. I wrote a strongly worded letter to Virgin Atlantic and Priceline, also enclosing documentation. Visa refunded us our money. Virgin Atlantic and Priceline remained silently guilty.

The following year we talked about going to London for Christmas. We pulled up flights and hotels online, almost ready to hit submit. We couldn’t do it.

We still haven’t been to a foreign country together.