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Monday, July 26, 2004 |
NYT article on webloggers who received press credentials for the
Democratic National Convention is headlined: "The Internet: Web
Diarists Are Now Official Members of Convention Press Corps". That is
irritatingly inaccurate, probably out of condescension. Weblogs are
online journals, and can take the form of a conventional diary, but
that is only one form. Calling all bloggers diarists is like calling
all reporters essayists.
This error would be somewhat less objectionable if the article were
about weblogs in general, but it isn't, and the webloggers in question
are almost universally *not* going to belong to be pracititioners of
the diarist style.
4:07:56 PM 
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The $5/ticket airline booking fee is a worry. On the surface, it
doesn't seem so bad, the price of using a third-party service. My
concern is that it will continue to go up, up, up. Just like the $25
re-ticketing fee quickly went to $100. $25 seemed very fair to me.
Quickly went to $50, which seemed stiff. Beyond $50, it is totally
prohibitive for your typical leisure travel.
2:02:46 PM
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For the first time since moving to a hub city, I got a good leisure
airfare. $154 per passenger to fly the family to Washington, D.C.
After using the travel engines to identify the fact that United had
the cheap airfare, I tried United's site directly, and found a
slightly cheaper fare of $147. Most of that, I think, was due to the
$5/ticket booking fee that the travel sites are now charging (I'm
thinking, but not 100% sure, that that is a pass-on from the airline).
Anyway, what the heck, $7 per ticket times 5 is worth saving, so I
proceeded to book on United. Until they did a big switcheroo--I
clicked the "Book" button, and they brought up the usual reservation
summary for confirmation. Only the airfare was now well over $300!
Close inspection revealed some "fine print" to the effect "fare no
longer available, blah, blah". I understand that happens, but if so, I
think it is *wrong* to present the confirmation with the new fare
unobtrusively substituted in. That is "bait and switch" in my book.
So, back to Travelocity, where I proceeded to execute the transaction
with the $25 booking fee.
1:59:58 PM
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© Copyright 2005 Erik Neu.
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