To fight the unbeatable foe

Just call me Don Quixote.

I’m not tilting at imaginary windmills, though. In my impossible dream, the foe is an actual airline. (For various reasons, I won’t identify the airline by name.)

My quest starts when I board a flight last month on this airline and, after squeezing into my seat, discover it won’t recline. When I bring this to the attention of the flight attendant, she helpfully informs me, “Oh, yeah, it’s broken.” So I mentally shrug off the inconvenience, because it’s only a one-hour flight. Besides, it’s impossible to physically shrug in a coach seat.

That would have been the end of the story except, when I receive my credit card bill, I discover that my broken seat was classified as “preferred” and I had been billed an extra $17.98 for the privilege of being squeezed into it. When I see the charge I get mad as heck and decide to stand up for my rights. I’ll become a regular Rosa Parks (technically, she sat down for her rights, but let’s not quibble).

One option is to contact the airline and express my displeasure. But I tried that route with this same airline in an earlier tilt. In that one I emailed the airline’s customer service address concerning a dispute and promptly received an automated reply that it had received my message and would get back to me soon. Which it may do, although I’m beginning to have my doubts because that was in February.

Another option is to hire an attorney and sue for pain and suffering, but there’s not really a lot of pain and suffering in a one-hour flight. Besides, it doesn’t make sense to pay a lawyer $200 an hour for a $17.98 issue.

Instead, I decide to teach the airline a lesson it won’t soon forget by not paying the $17.98. So I click on the credit card statement where it says to click for a disputed charge. A week later I receive an envelope from the credit card company containing a five-page form I need to fill out to detail my complaint.

Filling it out isn’t nearly as satisfying as I thought it might be, because when you actually sit down and write that you had to sit for an hour in a seat that wouldn’t recline it sounds a little whiny. I fill it out anyway, mail it back and now I’m waiting for the airline’s response. Which I’m not expecting it anytime soon, if ever. But at least I can say I strove with my last ounce of courage.

Even though the windmill almost always wins.

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