We had a very early start to our day to go home. We arrived at the airport at about 4:45 AM went through security, checked our bag, went through customs and the second security (when I say security it's not like in the US I will explain later) and then we were in our terminal. Hoping to buy a bottle of water it seemed that all the shops were either closed or the ladies working them were "on a break." We found this problem other places in Belarus as well and I will explain in a little bit what to expect as far as customer service if you ever go to Belarus in about one more paragraph.
Exhausted and ready to go home we waited, and waited, and then waited some more. Our flight was scheduled to board at 6:10 AM. Well 6:10 came and went and there was no one from the airline at the gate. We had seen the pilot and crew get on about 30 minutes earlier but to this point there was no communication from anyone on why we weren't boarding. At 6:45 AM, twenty minutes after the flight was supposed to have taken off we finally got some information. "There is a technical problem with you plane, the flight will be approximately 1 hour delayed." Ok, fine 1 hour no big deal we have a 9.5 hour layover in Frankfurt so no problem.
30 minutes later this announcement it made. "your flight has been cancelled please go to the customer service desk." YOU MUST BE FREAKING KIDDING ME RIGHT??? Wrong.
We exit the terminal and are told to wait. about 25 minutes of waiting and we are told that we are not allowed to go into the customer service line on the other side of security until we have our luggage and they can't tell us when we are going to get it. So we wait. Since there are two of us, Igor decides to go wait in the customer service line while I wait for the luggage. 45 minutes later I finally got the bag and Igor had moved 1 person up in line. I took his place so that he could go walk around a bit. 1 hour passes, 2 hours pass. Finally by the third hour we get to the front desk, but oh yeah that is right only one of the clerks is actually working with the customers, the other wont even look at you or acknowledges your existence at all. so then another 30 minutes pass and Ahhhh we finally get to talk to someone!
Igor takes the lead because their English is terrible. After quite a bit of discussion we are told that they can get me home but not Igor because he would need a visa to make more than 2 stops in Europe. The lfight would be Minsk to Prague to Frankfurt to SFO. Then when we said "no" to that they put us both on similar flights to the ones we were supposed to have that day, with less layover in Frankfurt, 3 hours instead of 9.5 hours. They asked if we were from Minsk, which we assumed was because they would have just told us to go home and come back tomorrow. Since we weren't and did not feel like bugging Igor's relatives they said "ok well get a taxi and a hotel and make sure that you hang on to the receipts". I told Igor to ask them who we were supposed to give those receipts to, they said Lufthansa. I said ok but how?, they said I don't know bring them to any Lufthansa office, or at the airport maybe in SFO. Seriously??? So Igor told them that was ridiculous and how could they expect Lufthansa in the States to understand Belarusian receipts and how do we know that they would accept them etc.
After a bit more bickering we got them to call us a cab, pay for our hotel room, get us lunch and dinner, as well as get us a cab back to the airport in the morning. Which would have been better if they had bothered to tell us that there was a cap on the cost of the food. We got to the hotel, which was pretty nice. the people there were pleasant and after some discussion with them about why there was a food cap, which we weren't told about, and why we were only getting dinner when at teh airport we were told we would get lunch and dinner not just dinner, we were set for the evening. It was raining pretty much all day and was nice a cool, of course. lol
Exhausted and ready to go home we waited, and waited, and then waited some more. Our flight was scheduled to board at 6:10 AM. Well 6:10 came and went and there was no one from the airline at the gate. We had seen the pilot and crew get on about 30 minutes earlier but to this point there was no communication from anyone on why we weren't boarding. At 6:45 AM, twenty minutes after the flight was supposed to have taken off we finally got some information. "There is a technical problem with you plane, the flight will be approximately 1 hour delayed." Ok, fine 1 hour no big deal we have a 9.5 hour layover in Frankfurt so no problem.
30 minutes later this announcement it made. "your flight has been cancelled please go to the customer service desk." YOU MUST BE FREAKING KIDDING ME RIGHT??? Wrong.
We exit the terminal and are told to wait. about 25 minutes of waiting and we are told that we are not allowed to go into the customer service line on the other side of security until we have our luggage and they can't tell us when we are going to get it. So we wait. Since there are two of us, Igor decides to go wait in the customer service line while I wait for the luggage. 45 minutes later I finally got the bag and Igor had moved 1 person up in line. I took his place so that he could go walk around a bit. 1 hour passes, 2 hours pass. Finally by the third hour we get to the front desk, but oh yeah that is right only one of the clerks is actually working with the customers, the other wont even look at you or acknowledges your existence at all. so then another 30 minutes pass and Ahhhh we finally get to talk to someone!
Igor takes the lead because their English is terrible. After quite a bit of discussion we are told that they can get me home but not Igor because he would need a visa to make more than 2 stops in Europe. The lfight would be Minsk to Prague to Frankfurt to SFO. Then when we said "no" to that they put us both on similar flights to the ones we were supposed to have that day, with less layover in Frankfurt, 3 hours instead of 9.5 hours. They asked if we were from Minsk, which we assumed was because they would have just told us to go home and come back tomorrow. Since we weren't and did not feel like bugging Igor's relatives they said "ok well get a taxi and a hotel and make sure that you hang on to the receipts". I told Igor to ask them who we were supposed to give those receipts to, they said Lufthansa. I said ok but how?, they said I don't know bring them to any Lufthansa office, or at the airport maybe in SFO. Seriously??? So Igor told them that was ridiculous and how could they expect Lufthansa in the States to understand Belarusian receipts and how do we know that they would accept them etc.
After a bit more bickering we got them to call us a cab, pay for our hotel room, get us lunch and dinner, as well as get us a cab back to the airport in the morning. Which would have been better if they had bothered to tell us that there was a cap on the cost of the food. We got to the hotel, which was pretty nice. the people there were pleasant and after some discussion with them about why there was a food cap, which we weren't told about, and why we were only getting dinner when at teh airport we were told we would get lunch and dinner not just dinner, we were set for the evening. It was raining pretty much all day and was nice a cool, of course. lol
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| View from our hotel room |
1 comment:
What a nightmare and thank god you had a native speaker with you. Could you imagine trying to do that alone?! Yuck.
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