The Goat Pen

Uber. Heh. At least you didn't get raped. Or did you?

its really not that big of a deal but I thought it was interesting that you get pinged for $5 if your uber driver determines he/she can't pick you up.

You can fight it but who is going to go thru the effort for $5?

I suspect that was Uber's thought process exactly...

I've never had a situation where the driver didn't at least try to contact me and work out a pick up point.

Cletus wrote:I've never had a situation where the driver didn't at least try to contact me and work out a pick up point.

Wasn't the case with me, and he started out like 3 minutes from me. I was on Adams, he expected me to go a block over to Canal

This is just a ploy Uber pulls when country comes to town...

Only hillbillies use Uber. You got a car. Use it.

back from Texas, short stay as there were small children in the house and I planned accordingly.

Left at 6am central, 4 stops no longer than 20 minutes to get gas or grab a sandwich and was home by 9:30pm eastern. Left 49 degrees to come home to 12. Its 5 outside right now. That will smack you in the face.

Whew...time to unhide all the silver.

heh

so I talked a few months ago about a vacation my wife and I were trying to put together.

It was a convoluted mess trying to include a train trip to Glacier from Chicago and then renting a car and going up to Banff.

Even with me visiting Union Station in Chicago before Xmas to get my bearings, it turned out just too complicated for me so we decided to just fly to Calgary, rent a car and go to Banff and spend our time in the Lake Louise area.

So I go to Travelocity and also Expedia who both use the same website backend to book trips - and you can book a vacation package where the website will package airfare, hotel and car giving you multiple options to choose from with varying price points. So I look at some hotels and do some research and pick out a hotel that meets our needs (Cletus will be happy to know that it has a Chili's onsite for that fine dining experience) and then click on the select button that is going to walk me thru the process of booking all this stuff.

its a bit of a bait and switch because whether its the hotel, airfare (in particular airfare) and car rental, they have all the upgrade prices. Now I understand they aren't going to quote me a presidential suite, first class airfare and a Lincoln town car, but the hotel was actually a nice suite with a living area and separate bedroom in the base package which I like but the airfare section starts me off with a 16 hour trip from Cincinnati to Calgary with 2 stops. In order to get it down to a more reasonable 5 hours with 1 stop , which I pretty much consider the standard airfare package for any reasonable flight in the US or Canada, it adds $471 to the trip . The car I don't care about - give me a Chevy Spark , I'll take the gas mileage.

So at the end of this process I end up being quoted almost $1000 more than the original quote once they throw in resort fees and taxes, etc., plus the airfare "upgrade" to a 5 hour 1 stop flight.

I decided to sleep on it a bit and then this morning I tried it on my own without the package. I didn't get the hotel any cheaper than was quoted but I did find multiple airfare options that were more reasonable and was able to get an intermediate car (like a Hyundai Sonata) as the rental.

Breaking it out individually, I was able to get the same thing the package deal offered me with the 5 hour airfare and better car for $800 less than the end package price. You'd think that packaging it would save you money, and the website tried to tell me that we save $170 per person by packaging it, but that isn't the case at all from my experience. Another benefit from piecing it out is that I didn't have to pay for it all at once. I won't have to pay for the hotel until I get there and I can cancel it a week before.

We're going to be there 5 days for our 20th anniversary. The kids (who will be 20 and 18 ) are going to stay at home with the dogs.

It's minus 2 degrees outside, pipes are frozen everywhere and you're planning a trip to Canada. You need your head checked.

Jungle Rat wrote:It's minus 2 degrees outside, pipes are frozen everywhere and you're planning a trip to Canada. You need your head checked.

in July

Still. Crazy thinking. I'd wanna go warm right now but there is nowhere to go unless I wanna deal with fires and my cousins kids.

You could go to Hell...

True but that wouldn't kill me or make me want to haunt you

I’m a veteran Expedia user and I concur with eCat. The bundling is getting out of hand, especially if you are spending a lot of time on the site. I hear the longer the time you are searching on their site for a particular trip the more expensive it gets because they sense you are more committed. Don’t know if it’s true, but it’s what I’ve heard. The only trip I bundled in 2017 was the Vegas trip. It seems to still give you great deals there through Expedia. All others I’ve pieced through various travel engines/rewards programs.

I wish you would bundle a trip to Fallujah...

D-

Agree...