The Gouging

AskNotWhomTheHornBlows
ItBlowsForWeVille

In my job I get to travel a little bit.

Not a huge amount, but it's gotten to the point where it has become a slight point of friction between my wife and myself.

This despite the fact that it's not as if I'm constantly jetting off to paradise.

Because usually it's stuff like Ottawa in November, Toronto in January, or Edmonton in March with an occasional science geek-a-thon in a place like Philadelphia or Houston thrown in for good measure.

But this December I've hit the jackpot. A double-whammy round-tripper, first to Hawaii and then San Francisco before coming home again.

Now, the fine public institution that I work for recently sent me an edict that all airfare had to be booked through their preferred (read: contracted) travel agent.

Knowing from previous experience that this agent will not get me the lowest possible price regardless airline or fare (for complicated reasons, it has been rumoured to have something to do with a 'selfless' corporate kick-back scheme) I promptly told the administration of the apparently still public institution that I work for to take a hike to the big double hockey sticks at the far end of HeVille (ie. not Duncan).

And I was able to get away with such blasphemy because, in my case at least, the institution that I work for pays for absolutely nothing. Instead, it all comes from research grants that my lab has garnered in peer-reviewed funding.

Put another way, that means that what I do is paid for with monies raised by folks banding together in various charitable organizations and working like heck going door to door, baking cakes, making calls, staging balls, and having relays etc.

Thus, there is no way that I'm going to waste travel money to, what I suspect, is to help the institution generate bulk mileage- assisted cheap tickets for Associate VP's and the like to fly to meetings to confab with other Associate VP's about who knows what, or some such thing.

OK, ok, ok, maybe they do use the tickets for useful things but, regardless, the point is that, I always book everything myself, usually directly through the Airlines.

Except that this time around I went with one of those online booking agents, the one that many have told me is the best around these parts.

And it was good. In fact, I was able to knock $400 off the best direct from the airline deal for the double-whammy round-tripper.

And what did they charge me for it?

Five dollars.

Five freaking dollars to put together a delicate itinerary involving two countries and three airports on a very tight schedule during the highest season for travel to and from the accursed Lono's former Islands.

All of which has me asking once again, as my family gets ready to make that extremely complicated, trapezoidal straight-shot from Vancouver to Victoria on 'our' ferries......

Why is it that 'we' let Mr. Hahn gouge us $17.50 to make a reservation on one of 'our' ferries that is a thousand times more simple than the one I just expedi(a)ted for the airfare?

And, what's worse, why do we let him do it to us both going and coming?

Think of it this way: everytime we make a reservation which allows Mr. Hahn to predict load and adjust schedules ahead of time we hand him $35 and effectively say....."Thanks for letting us be the suckers who pay you to screw us while we make your job easier".

Think perhaps that is too harsh?

Well, if that's the case, why do tickets for just about every mode of transportation known to man generally cost less when you book ahead?

Except, of course, for B.C. Ferries.

And don't even get me started on the bloody parking lots again.

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