EASYSHITE

Budget airlines? Fuck off!

They’re all robbing bastards. Fly for ten quid they say. Yeah, right. It doesn’t matter where or when you plan to go, those ten quid fares just don’t seem to exist. Maybe 40 quid. Then you add all the taxes and shit, and before you know it you’re up to £70 or more. And then you realize it’s each way.

Let’s get this into perspective first, before I start ranting proper. If you can fly to some Eastern European shithole for less than a train ride from Waterloo to some UK shithole like Yeovil, then I guess it represents good value. It’s the little catches and the bullshit that gets to me. Putting aside the relatively cheap fares, when you go on any of the budget airline websites you are bombarded with all kinds of crap designed to take more money off you. Want to add Speedy Boarding? Why would I? Be the first through the doors of the departure lounge to ensure you get the seat you want. You have got to be fucking stupid to fall for that one. Everyone knows that once you get through the doors and down the ramp, you get on a bleedin’ bus. Yeah, let’s all cough up another twelve quid or whatever so we can be first on the bus that goes out to the apron and dumps you next to the plane.

That’s where the real fun starts. Having paid your money to be first on the bus, you find that although you chose to stand next to the door at the front thinking you’d be first off, the bus sweeps round in a big arc around the plane and you find that actually, you are now at the back of the bus and on the wrong side to get out – you are the last one out of the doors, and you’ve just had your pants pulled down for twelve quid and every other bastard is fighting each other up the stairs into the plane. Sucker. You are left sitting next to the huge sweaty lard-ass from Bletchley

Got a question for Easyshite? Most questions can be answered via the website, but if you don’t find what you are looking for, you can use the ‘contact us’ form on the home page. Oh really? Try finding it. I scanned the home page over and over and I’m buggered if I could find any way of sending these bastards an email. It’s almost impossible to find a phone number, and when you do it’s a non-geographical 0870 number. So, having paid for my 01/02 anytime calls bundle, I still have to pay another 10p per minute to listen to some bint telling me to check the website and then another bint telling me they are doing their best to answer my call at this busy time, while the company racks up a couple more quid out of me, in between subjecting me to some dreadful muzak down the phone.

I have a number for easyshite head office that is geographical, but when you ring it the fucking old bag on reception will not put you through to customer services – she says you have to ring a different number. Why is that? So they can make a couple of extra quid out of you, that’s why. Just imagine all the poor bastards trying to get in touch by phone, on hold for several minutes at 10p per minute. Let’s just say ten calls every minute, for an average of ten minutes. That’s £10.00 per minute, £600.00 per hour, and £7200.00 for a 12 hour day at the call centre. A good chunk of that call revenue will go to the airline. I don’t know if that is a conservative estimate or just a wild guess that’s way off the mark, because although it seems busy because you are on hold for a while, they quite possibly could be putting you on hold to make more money and you’re in the queuing system for no reason. Think about it.

Talking of phone rip-offs, do yourself a favour, and next time you go to ring an 0845 or whatever type number, go and take a look at the website: www.saynoto0870.com where you can search for alternative landline numbers. It’s a database of alternative numbers put together by people who are pissed off with having to pay for the call when they’ve already paid for it through their phone provider. Good on ‘em I say. The website even won an award. Gives you some idea how people view these money-grabbing call centres.

Anyway, back to easyshite. I booked flights way back in March to take the missus and the sprog to Poland for a wedding a few weeks back in August this year. £222.00 or thereabouts for the three of us return. Not bad at £74.00 each. We booked in for one bag only in the hold, because they charge almost as much as the bloody fare for a passenger. See, that’s where they get you – if you can’t go hand baggage you’re fucked. £16 per bag each way and if you take more than 20kg Gawd help you. You will need a bank loan to cover the excess baggage fee. So we paid for one bag between us which we thought should be enough with the hand baggage as well. Of course, trying to sort out clobber for the trip, the fucking wife was bleating that we couldn’t do it in one bag – ‘why didn’t you put two on?’ Because I don’t want those robbing shits to take any more cash off me. Besides, she agreed to it. Except that she swears blind she didn’t and I just went ahead and made the decision all by myself. Fact is she was sat next to me confirming everything with me before I hit the ‘book now’ button.

Another wind up: the hand baggage can weigh as much as you can lift into the cabin bins, but it has to be no bigger than 55x40x20cm. Guess what? I’ve got the perfect travel bag, that’s a backpack with a ‘mini-me’ secondary detachable backpack on the front, and wheels and a handle for when you don’t want to carry it on your back. Trouble is, although the bag is just within the size limits, the fucking wheels take it a few cm over to 60cm. And you know what would happen had I turned up with it and got asked to put it in the little measuring frame? Yes, that’s right, they would have made me put it in the hold and that costs even more when done at the airport. What a fucking wind-up. It’s an ideal travel bag, but no way was I going to risk it.

So, we booked in March to fly to in August. Come May we get an email from those c**ts to say they’ve cancelled our flight. No reason, no apology, just to let us know we are no longer flying to Warsaw on Aug 6 and perhaps we’d like to go back onto the website and re-book another flight, for no extra charge. No extra charge? Fuck me, do they think they are doing me a favour??

I tried to book the flight on a different day, but every time I got ‘no seats available’. In the end I phoned up customer services, listened to the old bint, heard some shite music, and asked the real live bint (after several minutes of crap) what the fuck was going on. “oh, we’ve cancelled that route’ Why? “no longer viable – they put the landing fees up, so we cancelled the route.” What about your obligation to the passengers that have already paid for their flights well in advance, and whose money you’ve trousered and earned a bit of interest on? Seems they don’t give a flying fuck about the customer. So that’s why I couldn’t re-book it. It doesn’t exist anymore. Well thanks a bunch.

So finally, after a lot of fucking about, we flew from Bristol to Krakow instead and had to suffer another four hours of traveling by train to Warsaw, at extra cost, with numb arses riding in a cattle truck, and kids jeering on the side of the track, waving and making slit throat gestures as we passed through the Auschwitz region.

The last time I went to Krakow I went with easyshite, only to find I could have gone with BA for a fiver less. That hurt knowing that after I had committed to going with the other shower. Didn’t work out this time, but what a shitter, eh?

Still, it was a great wedding – I’m glad I packed me dinking boots.

Fuck ‘em all.

Bill Turnip