FW: FULL REPORT

HOPE THIS GETS TO YOU...

< -----Original Message-----
< From: Sekula, Marc [SMTP:Marc_Sekula@bmc.com]
< Sent: Thursday, September 16, 1999 6:00 AM
< To: 'GDavid@mdck.com'
< Cc: 'ESager@enron.com'
< Subject: FULL REPORT
<
< Gail,
<
< How's Ms. Kitty? We will moving to a different hotel in Stockholm on
< Friday. We are currently staying at Hotel Ornskold, Nybrog 6, 11434
< Stockholm, Sweden. Phone 0114686670285. Our new hotel will be: Hotell
< Diplomat, Strandv. 7C, s10440.
< Telephone 46-8-663 58 00.
<
< The first leg of our flight left Houston 3 hours late. We missed the
< connection to Amsterdam here in Newark. Continental Airlines had no
< information or other assistance prepared for all its Boeing 777 passengers
< deplaning here at 11:00 p.m. in Newark's airport.
<
< By 12:00 a.m., we learned we had already been re-booked for the same
< flight
< one DAY later (without consulting us, I might add). After we finally made
< it through the line of other angry travelers, Continental informed us they
< weren't required to, but were going to generously put us up in the closest
< hotel that had rooms available. Saddle Brook, New Jersey. Howard
< Johnson's Motel.
<
< What could we do? They claimed there were no other hotel accommodations
< available. We went out to the end of the Monorail line where the ticket
< agent had told us there would be a shuttle service waiting to take us the
< 30-minute drive to the hotel. It was raining. And it was now 1:30 a.m.
<
< Which would have been fine, except for the fact that there was no
< shuttle.
< And there never was going to be a shuttle. It turns out, it just doesn't
< exist. But we didn't learn of this until 2:30 a.m. (it's still raining at
< 2:30 a.m.)
<
< So we trekked back into the terminal, where (naturally) the person who had
< told us to use the shuttle was, by now, home and in bed and couldn't be
< reached. We decided to take a cab anyway, risking the fact that there
< might
< not be a room available for us, there might not be a Howard Johnson's
< Motel
< in Saddle Brook, New Jersey, and, in fact, there might not even be a
< Saddle
< Brook, New Jersey.
<
< There is, as it turns out, a Saddle Brook, New Jersey. And there is a
< Howard Johnson's Motel there. (Now think about the image in your head as
< to
< what a Howard Johnson's motel room looks like. I have no doubt that you
< hit
< the nail on the head: everything you would think it would be, and a lot,
< lot cheaper.)But at least Continental Airlines gave us these very nice
< vouchers for a free lunch at Howard Johnson's Motel for the next day.
<
< Which would have been fine, except for the fact that Howard Johnson's
< doesn't serve lunch. And again, it's raining, and there are no cabs in
< Saddle Brook, New Jersey. So, we decided to walk 6 blocks in the rain to
< a
< local breakfast place that had been suggested by the 3'7" hotel clerk at
< Howard Johnson's (I'm not even going to go into that one.) The clerk had
< suggested this breakfast place, and it was exactly what you'd expect to
< find
< in a town that smells like dead fish and machine lubricants. The waitress
< talked to the guy at the next table about divorcing her husband of 26
< years,
< while the guy she was talking to said he was going to "O.J. my wife." And
< you can get your eggs any style you want: scrambled or sunny-side up.
< Poached? No. Hardboiled? No. Soft-boiled? No. But any style you
< want.
<
<
< We are definitely in New Jersey.
<
< Continental Airlines, after learning of their earlier lies, volunteer to
< give us a shuttle ride back to the airport this afternoon, on this bus
< they
< hired to go through Saddle Brook, New Jersey to pick up their various
< stranded passengers. The bus indeed did pick us up on time, and we began
< ride back to beautiful Newark.
<
< Which would have been fine, except for the Mack truck we rear-ended on the
< New Jersey turnpike.
<
< Now, Gail, you know I'm not clever enough to make this stuff up.
<
< And our latest run-in with the customer service people in, it turns out,
< the
< Denver, Colorado office of Continental Airlines (led by Scott Sims, just
< for
< your records), and the charming and highly-educated Newark, New Jersey
< staff
< (led by a woman named Sonia Mirada, also for your records), has been the
< worst experience I have ever had with an airline. But that would be the
< subject of another email.
<
< Marc