How To Turn The Internet Into Your Own Personal And Powerful Advantage Over The Airlines
Although the airlines aren’t quite working against travelers (they do actually fly us places) their size and structure makes it tough to deal with them. You’re the little guy working to make things right with behemoth companies – but now you’ve got the biggest older brother on your side to make sure that happens.
Get In Touch Directly
Communication is an important part of any relationship and most of your air travel worries can be solved by talking to a human airline employee. However, actually reaching one can be difficult at best. You may already know when and how to fight the airlines, even using methods from Sun Tzu’s Art Of War, but it’s important to get your message to the right employee.
- Skip Automated Phone Prompts – Aptly named website GetHuman helps you do just that by telling you exactly the digits to type to weave through annoying automated customer service menus. GetHuman and similar site Contact Help also make it easy to find most airline customer service numbers.
- Take Contact Numbers Offline – Business travelers can take those hard-to-reach airline phone numbers with them offline using the eSkyGuide iPhone app ($4.99) which also has contacts for hotels, rental car agencies, and more.
- Call The CEO – You can find contact (phone and email) information for the bosses of many major airlines on this Consumerist list.
These tactics will also help you save time but don’t inadvertently waste yours by immediately calling the most powerful person at a company because your flight was delayed 10 minutes. Be reasonable and escalate your complaints and suggestions accordingly.
Do Your Research
The airlines often know a lot more about you than you do about them, making you susceptible to fees, expiring frequent flyer miles, and screaming babies. Luckily for you the Internet is a wealth of knowledge to help you get a leg up.
- Dodge Extra Charges – Handy site Luggage Limits preps you for all of the fees associated with each airline so you can put your backpack on a diet if need be.
- Digitize Your Frequent Flyer Accounts – Don’t ever let another mile expire by tracking your accounts with Award Wallet and bump your earning up a notch by exchanging with other travelers on Points.com.
Screaming babies are pretty hard to drown out when you’re flying in a small aluminum tube in the sky but infants are unlikely to be placed in the emergency exit rows. Try requesting a seat there, finding a secret seat, or calling the airline ahead of time to ask if any infants are booked on your flight (and for a seat far, far away). It’s not a surefire method against loud babies but at least your body can be comfortable – both Seat Guru and Seat Expert can tip you off to specific seats with extra legroom.
Save Money By Automating And Becoming Anonymous
The airlines have the online advantage of being able to track every single ticket purchased and the habits of specific customers. Identifying information from your computer and online accounts can help the airlines predict how and when you might be likely to purchase an airline ticket.
Airlines typically want to hook you with a low initial price but may increase it slightly if they know you don’t usually buy until after about two weeks of searching. Although the jury is still out on how much manipulation actually goes on, you can easily become a mystery shopper online by hiding your tracks.
- Search With Two Browsers – While there are many methods of hiding your browsing habits online, by using one browser (e.g. Internet Explorer) for all of your searching and another, like Firefox, to purchase plane tickets is a straightforward shot. That ensure that different cookies are used when you hit a particular airline or airfare search engine. (It also helps to use a “Private Browsing Mode” right before you buy.)
- Hack Routes – Leveraging tools like Kayak Explore you can use multi-city flights to see more places for less.
- Try The Foreign Version Of Airline Sites – Adding a “.fr” instead of “.com” to Airfrance’s website might result in lower fares. The same trick goes for other international airlines. You can also use one of these free international proxies or FoxyProxy to appear like you’re browsing from just about anywhere.
- Track And Get Price Alerts – Online tool Yapta follows particular flights and airfares for you, alerting you via email when they drop. Yapta also keeps track of any coupons, refunds, and vouchers you might be entitled to before and after you book.
- Find Discount Codes Before Booking – Both RetailMeNot and Coupon Winner have comprehensive lists of all the airline discount codes, current sales, and special offers that can help you chip away at any airfare.
You can also give yourself a perk and make a bit more out of every cent by searching for flights with free wi-fi using HasWifi. Google is also offering free wi-fi on several airlines through early January.
Maintaining The Digital Edge
All airlines aren’t evil or working against consumers but they are using technology in a number of ways to give them an advantage over you and your wallet. The Internet helps tip the scales in your favor but don’t forget to combine it with some old school methods of working your way around the airlines for free for a well-rounded approach.
[photos by: Don Solo (glow of laptop), m00by (student researching), Tom Rydquist (footprints in the sand)]
For UK travel discounts book through First Choice and use a First Choice discount code.
When Travel Becomes Work And How To Turn It Back Around Again
Whether you’re exhausted from an extended RTW trip, travel for business, or travel is your business it’s easy to lose sight of the privilege that is traveling. Neglecting luxuries and taking them for granted, much like your car when you’re stuck in traffic, is a common ailment. The problem arises when you disconnect travel from all the things it’s tied to in your particular life. Perhaps you come up with a trip plan so meticulous it can’t possibly be met or stress yourself bald saving up for a honeymoon to Turkey.
Whatever the case may be it comes down to reconnecting with your old flame – travel – and realizing the problem isn’t quite with it itself.
List The Disconnects
Chances are if you made a list about all the things you hate about traveling, the word “traveling” wouldn’t be atop that list. Your list would be full of all sorts of things revolving around travel; long lines at the airport or hours of answering emails upon arriving at your hotel. Relieve yourself from the burden that you might actually be coming to despise travel by listing what you love and hate. Look at where the two aren’t connecting so you can begin to shift your focus.
Roles Reversed
Traveling becomes work when you focus on everything in preparation of traveling rather than actually traveling itself. You might be intent on saving thousands of dollars or seeing every square centimeter of Australia in a week – when it’s painful you know you’ve lost sight. Working so hard to make travel work takes the fun out of it – so what’s the point? There are plenty of tough situations in life where the bright spots are dull at best but travel isn’t one of them. You might have the small joy of eating on the company dime in El Paso or sipping on a beer with your wife in southern France. The moments don’t have to be long or perfect but are there if you look for them.
Reconnect with what you love about traveling. It might be the food, meeting new people, or simply seeing something new; while keeping in mind that it’s an opportunity many people around the world don’t have.
Shifting Direction Between Your Ears
The most straightforward way to put the fun back into traveling is to take a step back from all the work you’ve made it become.
- Long lines at the airport are a pain but consider what traveling across half the world would entail 100 years ago?
We can all miss the slow creep of the scales tipping from travel to work yet once you do there’s no need to feel guilty. Look at what’s weighing you down and lighten the load by letting go – if even for just a short time. Traveling can be work and that’s fine; but if that’s all it is, you might as well stay home.
[photos by: stuartpilbrow (pulling hair out), bottled_void (smiley stress ball)]
Uncovering The Variety Within Buffalo, New York
November 4, 2010 by Anil P.
Filed under Guest Post
This is a guest post by Laura Pedersen, the author of Buffalo Unbound: A Celebation. When Forbes magazine recently ranked Buffalo, New York, eighth on a list of America’s 10 Most Miserable Cities, former New York Times columnist set out to celebrate the people and places that make Buffalo an exciting place to visit.
Buffalo is a city like Chicago or Manhattan in that it’s easy to spend a week here and fill every minute of your time whether you’re an art lover, foodie, sports fan, architecture buff, shopper, music aficionado, or all of the above. And that’s just indoors. Buffalo also offers fishing, water sports, garden walks, boat rides on the Erie Canal, and every type of winter sport including broomball, ice sailing, shovel racing, and bike skiing.
First, The Culture Vulture Itinerary
Start at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery with its world class collection of modern and contemporary art. Next day take in the Burchfield Penney Art Center featuring regional works including those of Charles Burchfield, famous for their phantasmagorical plots and undulating lines. And finally, the UB Anderson Gallery.
In order to properly discuss negative space, aerial perspective, and hierarchic proportion, you’ll want to have lattes or peppermint chai at the cool cafes on Elmwood Avenue and then dinner in the hip Allentown neighborhood, among all the galleries and shops. Dozens of downtown theaters mount well-known works in addition to homegrown productions. And almost every Broadway touring show stops in Buffalo (usually at the famous Shea’s Performing Arts Center) since this is a city where people come out for events no matter what the weather is like. Kleinhans Music Hall, built by famous father/son architects Eliel and Eero Saarinen, is one of the best concert halls in the country, and home to the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, which has won two Grammy awards and can be heard on the soundtrack of Woody Allen’s Manhattan.
Lovers of fine architecture will also want to take in the magnificent art deco City Hall and Buffalo Terminal, Louis Sullivan’s Guaranty Building (now called the Prudential Building), and the (count ‘em!) five Frank Lloyd Wright houses. On the religious front there’s Our Lady of Victory Basilica, which is guarded by four 18-foot high angels, contains two hundred French stained-glass windows, and has been recognized as one of the most beautiful cathedrals in the world.
Bars, Music, And Dancing In Buffalo
Mark Twain once said that you can’t throw a brick in Montreal without breaking a church window. The same is true in Buffalo if you include saloon windows. Buffalo has a last call of 4 AM so there’s plenty of nightlife, including a thriving music scene. In addition to oodles of Bach, blues, brass, head-banging rock, indie pop, and hip-hop, one can just as easily find polka, barbershop quartets, square dancing, a cappalla, karaoke, and the chicken dance (mostly at weddings). Live music can be heard in Buffalo’s hottest club-hopping neighborhoods — rowdy Chippewa Street, alternative lifestyle-friendly Elmwood Village, the college crowd hangouts on Main Street within walking distance of the University of Buffalo, and Hertel Avenue, where there’s everything from smooth jazz to alt rock.
You can’t enjoy good music without good beer, and Buffalo has never been known to let anyone go thirsty. Pearl Street Grill & Brewery along with our many local clubs and gin mills keep quality libations flowing in addition to providing a friendly and welcoming atmosphere. Where else can you become a regular in under an hour? Beer is also good for washing down local favs such as chicken wings, beef on weck, and souvlaki.
Buffalo Sports
If you’re a sports fan then be sure to take in a Bills, Bisons or Sabres game. Or my favorite league, the Queen City Roller Girls, who describe themselves as “radical, free-thinking, free-wheeling women who love the smell of the rink and the feel of eight wheels under their feet.” Halftime means a live rock band and dozens of loaves of Al Cohen’s seeded rye break being energetically tossed into the crowd.
History buffs will want to stop at the recently renovated Wilcox Museum, where Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley. Auto enthusiasts shouldn’t miss the Buffalo Transportation Pierce-Arrow Museum. And there’s plenty for the kids including Martin’s Fantasy Island amusement park, the extensive and well-stocked Buffalo Zoo, planetarium, skiing and skating (lessons if needed), go-carts and laser tag. That wonder of the world Niagara Falls is only a twenty minute drive from downtown. Likewise, the wineries and famous Shaw Festival of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.
The reason you’ll be able to pack so much in is that there aren’t any traffic jams or long lines here. And as I say in my book Buffalo Unbound, it’s known as The City of Good Neighbors for a reason — these are the kind of people who would lend you their last pair of long johns. Obviously, time spent sleeping in Buffalo is time wasted. The only thing to watch out for when visiting western New York is that you may not want to leave, because it’s that good.
Thank you very much Laura for your inside look into Buffalo. You can learn even more about the city in Laura’s book, Buffalo Unbound.
[photos by: anothersaab (Buffalo Harbor), mark.hogan (Albright-Knox Art Gallery), chrissam42 (Buffalo City Hall), Joe Rollerfan (Queen City Roller Girls)]
The Smallest Cafe In Sweden
November 2, 2010 by Anil P.
Filed under Pictures and Video
This tiny stop along a lonely road in Linderas, Sweden, is that country’s smallest cafe. (Conveniently advertised too although I’m not sure how they determined who gets that distinction.) About 90 kilometers east of Halmstad and an hour away from Knared’s Stone Memorial, it’s very unassuming as you’d expect a coffee-loving nation’s smallest “Cafe & Pastry” shop to be. Probably my biggest regret about taking this picture is what I didn’t do after – try the coffee.
