What can I tell … IU and National just rule!

 

Being picked up by a Limo for your ride to the airport is fun, right? But not being picked up at all, or at least suspecting it, is no fun. I actually decided a while ago to not use the Limo for airport transportation because (1) it’s expensive and (2) inconvenient. It’s actually cheaper to get a rental car and it also saves a lot of time. The Limo people insist on picking you up at least three hours before your flight … so that you ar two hours before departure at the airport. Ridiculous waste of time. And I also often encountered long waiting times on the way from the airport to Bloomington.

For example when I arrived in Indianapolis after a 21 hour travel from Dresden. I arrived a 9:45pm (30 minutes late becaue US domestic travel sucks). I was told that they were waiting for two other passengers … maximum 30 minutes. Ok, so I waited. I asked again at 10:30pm (so far about the 30 Minutes) and they said that we were leaving. We left 9:35pm. Ah kind of … the driver got a call and we returned after 10 minutes driving to the airport to pick up the missing passenger. 10:50pm – we finally left to Bloomington. Oh yeah, and we had to drop somebody off in Elletsville. Great, the drive took more than an hour. I arrived home about 2.5hrs after arriving at the airport. A rental car would have brought me there in about 45-55 minutes for $5 less.

But today’s experience was just great! So they told me that they would pick me up at 5:15. They did not call me the day before as I was told (they probably did not reach me), so I just assumed that this would be ok. I tried to call them in the morning … their phone seemed broken (“call can not be completed”). So I wrote them an email. But it got 5:20 in the meantime. So I tried to call again. The phone seemed to work this time … I was able to talk to somebody. She told me that I was rescheduled to 5:40 *argh* but the driver is already running late, so probably 5:50 *ARGH*. Mentioning my email-attempt was only answered by a harsh “I just got here and we don’t read emails during weekends” WTF! Ok, calming down and waiting. 5:50 … nobody there. I called again – this time an answereing machine. So I called the “emergency pickup
phone” which led me to the answering machine of the “General Manager” (WHAT!?). I tried again, this time I ended up on another answereing machine (yes, their phonesystem is indeterministic). So I called the emergency number again and I ended up with the same women that also handled the normal number. She did not even try to apologize and assured
me that the car is going to show up in a minute. … nothing … 6:15 … finally, a car showed up. The driver warned me that the other passenger was “very aggressive”. Oh fun, aggressive people … but it turned out that he was just pissed by his late pickup. So we had a nice chat, and he was actually some admin person from IU who was really into changing things (cancelling the contract with Classictouch). This all seems right to me (given my bad experience and today’s happenings).

The driver I came with was actually supposed to pick up Tim too. But the “aggressive passenger” *lol* prevented this one. I am wondering how Tim’s experience was today ;). The flights with Frontier were ok and on time *yay*. But Tim’s cool direct flight was delayed such that I’m sitting in the San Francisco Airport right now … oh man. But I like the Frontier “A whole different animal” thing … they’re unfortunately not in any useful frequent flyer program :-/.

I just came back and had a Pontiac Grand Prix as a rental. Freaking buggy car … I would never buy it! But ok as a rental for half a day ;).