Sulky Fare

US$99 round trip to Singapore? Sound too good to be true! (And it was.)

That's what Silk Air offered in an ad published last week. I got all excited and started jumping up and down, thinking that at last, budget fares were in Cebu. No more envious comparisons between airlines operating in Manila and Cebu; it's about time for us consumers to also find this option right here. Well, call it a case of premature jubilation.

I tried the number published in the ad - nobody answered. It was a Saturday, and the offices were apparently closed. Sunday was the same thing, so first thing Monday, I dialed the numbers and in my chirpiest manner, asked for the $99 special.

The girl at the other end chirped right back: "Which dates do you want to fly? Oh, October 31? Hold on!" A few clickety clacks were heard from her computer and she came back to me, "Oh sir, I'm sorry, our $99 seats are limited per flight, and all the seats for that date have been taken."

"Fine, no problem," I chirped, "what about November 1?" Clickety clack, clickety clack, then the girl comes back. "Er, I'm sorry sir, but that date is already sold out."

"Ooookaayywhat about November 2?" The clickety clacks resume, but at a slower pace. Then the girl reluctantly gets back on the phone to tell me what I already suspect - the seats for that date are also sold out. So, to cut the process short, I ask her to give me a seat, any date from November 3 to December 1, when the promo offer was supposed to be "good."

I don't need to tell you the results of the clickety clacks - as you're probably already suspecting, like I did, there were no seats left for the entire month of the promo. So I utter those words so dreaded by the employees of this world, "Can I speak to your manager?"

I'm put on hold, then after a few seconds, she's back. The chirp is right back in her tone as well, and she then goes through this long elaborate process of getting my full name, my preferred flight dates, and my contact details. I'm ecstatic - magic tactic number 1 worked!

She's actually giving me a ticket. At the end of this process, tweety summarizes our conversation and says, "Ok, Mr. Gonzales you have a booking for October 31, but you're waitlisted and it's not confirmed."

Huh? What's that? Does this twit actually think I'm that dumb? She knows I want a ticket and we go through this whole frigging process and now she thinks she can put one over me? Hello, Miss Thing, I not only know my way around fine-print, I make them!

So I go back to magic tactic - "Can I please speak with your manager?" After being put on hold for more than ten minutes, tweety comes back to see if I'm still alive, and then she puts me through. Unfortunately, the next person was not a manager, but a pretender. She was a supervisor, that vague indefinable level where, you know, they pretend they have authority but everybody knows they actually don't?

So Miss Supervisor gets on the phone and, clearly basking in her power, isn't impressed with anything I say. She doesn't care when I point out that there are no seats left this early in their freaking promo, and after casually asking around her office (with me hearing every nuance of her couldn't-care-less voice) to find out when exactly their ad ran, she finds out it first ran on Saturday. So, I reason with her, if the ad ran last Saturday, and their offices were closed this weekend, and it's only a Monday morning, shouldn't you have seats left?

Super Miss isn't used to calming irate clients, she gets irate right back, and tells me triumphantly that Silk Air had been pre-selling the tickets to travel agents since October 7 - so it wasn't really to be helped if there were no seats! So there!

This leads me to my coup de grace - "Why'd you even offer those seats and publish the ad if they'd all been gobbled by your travel agents?" Super Miss doesn't have a super answer, but she has a super backbone. So when I try magic tactic number 2 (Threaten her with fire and brimstone, ruin and damnation, exposure to all the newspapers in the world and petitions before multinational institutions), she doesn't give. I have no choice but to hang up with all the grace I could muster (none), and dial my travel agent.

"Hello? Do you have some of those $99 Silk Air seats stashed away?"