We continue to mourn the untimely passing of our beloved compatriot DePat, known in real life as Susie Sampson, and also as author Patricia Holden.
Until we have a dedicated author for the Tuesday daily open thread, I will be posting “placeholders” like this one, which may or may not be spiced up with additional content.
Gudthots will take DePat’s old Thursday daily open thread.
Please notify me in advance if you would like to post anything in lieu of the Tuesday placeholder. We welcome all content – the topic doesn’t matter.
W
Addendum: Some Details
First of all, the boilerplate.
By reference, I call to incorporate the rules spoken of in any of Deplorable Patriot’s recent posts, such as her final one.
With that settled, I reiterate……
A call for weekly open-thread authors on Tuesday.
Your submissions only need to be scheduled at 12:01 AM on Tuesday.
The titles need to include the following:
DEAR MAGA: Open Thread YYYYMMDD ❀ [whatever you want after that]
There is no commitment to do this every week. But if you want to do a Tuesday post, just let me know in advance.
We do have a very thin guideline post of basics in the sidebar, shown here:
Looking forward to somebody picking up DePat’s Tuesday sword.
Addendum: An Open Letter In Praise of the American Air Travel Industry
This is just a quick message of THANKS to some people who are sadly undergoing a lot of scrutiny and criticism right now, and who surely could use an “attaboy” and some “kudos”.
You see, sometimes – including recently – I have had to deal with “foreign” airlines of various kinds.
Foreign airlines can actually be quite excellent. Some of them are charming. Some of them are extremely enjoyable to fly on. Some of them are very attentive, and can really help make a trip overseas quite memorable. There are several foreign airlines that I love for different reasons.
HOWEVER.
If you deal with foreign airlines long enough, you are bound to run into their dark and highly inefficient sides. They will sometimes do stuff that just boggles the mind.
In particular, their technology is usually just problematic. Or to be fully honest, it sucks. Big-time sucks.
- websites will crash
- websites will drop your session and forget you were ever there
- representatives will put you on hold and lose your call
- the company will forget to bill you
- flights will simply disappear from itineraries
- picking seats will cause itineraries to malfunction
- calls to customer service will cause itineraries to vanish
- confirmation numbers will vanish
- the same data will have to be “saved” over and over again – and then gets lost anyway
I recently had to deal with an airline that was absolutely no problem the last two times, during the last several years – but THIS TIME – OMG – what an absolute disaster. Dozens of hours arranging things – lost. KAPOOF! Gone. Vanished. So call customer service. Get it all fixed. Everything done. Waiting for the bill. No bill.
And then it all just disappears again.
Just an absolute waste of my time.
SO – because I was short on time – I decided to try something different. I attempted to re-book the trip using an American airline company.
The experience was just overwhelmingly positive. I managed to get almost the entire itinerary of foreign flights that we had before – but this time, everything went perfectly, and we were done in minutes, not hours. No tech errors AT ALL. Billed immediately. All the minor things we needed – DONE.
The websites functioned perfectly. All the international bullshit – DONE.
After all the CRAP we had put up with, it was a PLEASURE dealing with American airline tech – which could sell us foreign flights better than the foreigners could sell them to us.
So I just want to say THANK YOU to the American air travel industry for restoring my faith in air travel. Y’all done good!
W
