Upgrades, Confirmations, and a Whole Lotta Stress

With our pack-out next week and our move following just 12 short days later, the stress level at Casa de Chaos is kicking up a notch. This weekend's saga revolved around the upgrades on our flight from Frankfurt to Los Angeles, as well as the confirmation for Libby the Lab on all our flights.

When we changed our departure date from May 25 to June 3 and re-booked the flights, somehow our upgrades to business had been overlooked. How do I know this? I spent 25 minutes on the phone with a United agent last Friday. It all started when I called our travel department at the Embassy to ask about Libby's flight confirmations. They told me that they will only confirm the dog from here to Los Angeles and that it's my responsibility to check on her confirmations for the remaining legs of our travel. No problem, I'm happy to call United myself. I also asked about our upgrades from cattle call class to business, to which she also replied that we hadn't been confirmed for our upgrades, but she calls them every week to find out where we are on the list.

So Friday night I called United and spoke with a reservation agent. I prefaced my call by telling her I had 3 questions: 1.) Is Libby confirmed on all flights from Tel Aviv to Chennai - and what is the cost for each leg? 2.) What is the status of our upgrades from Frankfurt to Los Angeles and from Washington, D.C. to Frankfurt? 3.) What are our seating assignments on all flights if we don't clear for the upgrade? Can we request bulk head seating as we're premier members and flying with toddlers?

During our 25 minute phone conversation I discovered that 1.) Libby was NOT confirmed on all flights. Surprisingly she was only confirmed from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. and then Washington, D.C. to Chennai. 2.) They have no record of our upgrade request for our flight from Frankfurt to Los Angeles - it was never resubmitted after we changed our original departure date. 3.) She would not request bulk head seating for us, and we are somewhere in the middle of the airplane for all flights. But at least we're all smushed together! Isn't that great?

I've now spent most of my day dealing with our travel department confirming and re-confirming the dog on ALL flights. I'm also going to battle over our upgrades and the confirmation and re-confirmation of them in the Embassy travel department's system and in United's. They swear that they're taking good care of our travel and our departure. I swear that they're making more work for me. The end result is that I have to continually confirm their confirmations.

Blood pressure rising? Confirmed!