Alternate title A: “Good god, I’ve been bumped (or as I like to call it — ‘getting royally shafted by a corporate airline with no soul’)”

Alternate title B: “SXSW, here I co….wait, just one second there, padna!”

Customer service is dead. (Almost).

After years of hearing about the trend of airlines overbooking and thinking it was urban legend or something that only happened to people who had done something truly heinous in a previous life, it happened to me. Actually, it happened to me and five (it was thought to be four, but we caught up with the fifth later) other randomly chosen unfortunates, by the evil trolls that live deep within the bowels of United Airline’s computer reservations mainframes.

Apparently, it’s not good enough anymore to simply make a reservation with an airline. As I learned today, this does not guarantee you will get a seat on a booked flight. Even if you show up almost 3 hours early, make it through security without a hitch and have the luxury of time of your side, you may unwittingly be doomed. Walking up to the ticket gate around noon, I had no doubt I’d be boarding for my 12:30 flight to Austin. Nothing in previous travel experiences had alerted me to the fact that this could ever happen. I knew flights got overbooked and people could volunteer to skip in exchange for comps, but I hadn’t realized the extent of it and how unaware airlines really are when it comes to factors like conventions and the fact that overbooking is a shady business practice.

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