An open letter to US Airways

Dear US Airways Customer Service:

My husband and I recently booked multi-city tickets from Philadelphia to St. Louis and Memphis to Philadelphia on your website. The experience was nothing short of mind-blowing frustration. You see, we had to book our tickets separately since my husband was flying back to Philadelphia several days earlier than I was. We had two browser windows open at the same time so we made sure to get seats next to each other for the outbound flight (shocking I know). My ticket was booked. My husband's ticket purported to be the same price. Little did we know that your website has the same accuracy as the pathological liars we call weathermen. We clicked "purchase" and anxiously awaited our simple transaction to be completed.

Hahahahahahaha. We received an error code that politely requested we try the transaction again in a few minutes. Naively, we did just that. Imagine our surprise when the ticket was $50 more than a "few minutes" before. OK, we thought ... surely the nice people at the reservations desk will understand the situation at hand. My husband called the number listed on your error code and explained what happened. Naturally, the person he spoke with could not help us.

Apparently, the evil computers at US Airways confound the nice people at the reservations desk such that there is no possible way to change a price that the "system" spits out. Stupid "system" anyway. You would think that the "system" should be working for your friendly reservations desk people, not acting like a school yard bully. After speaking to three people at your super reservations department (none of which were the supervisor my husband asked to speak with), we asked to lodge a complaint.

My husband was given a phone number for the "customer relations" department. The "customer relations" department was an answering machine that asked us to call again later. Glad you're saving money on the "customer relations" department. This must be how you can claim low complaint numbers ... people can't actually complain. Undaunted, I clicked through approximately a dozen links on your website to lodge our complaint. I'm sure it will go into the same circular storage as your "customer relations" answering machine.

Please rest assured that you will not be receiving any further complaints from us as we will no longer avail ourselves of your services.

Your very best friends,

Jenn and Ryan