We had a somewhat similar experience all the way back to1985. John and I were bringing our two daughters for one of their earliest trips and we were using a friends two bedroom villa at Mullet Bay. We were pretty naive travelers back then and had basically no clue as to what might happen if we arrived late since there was no credit card holding our reservation and this was the first time we'd actually used his place.
It was the Saturday before Easter and we were a party of four, and all of us were holding pretty nice seat assignments. The flight was way oversold and the AA gate agents were about at the point of begging people to give up their seats. Did I mention they were offering cold, green spendable dollars and the offer kept climbing? Three hundred! Four hundred! Four hundred fifty! Five hundred! Five hundred fifty.....do the math? Twenty-two hundred dollars cash for our family of four with an absolute assurance we'd be on the next plane out. He was good to go! And then there was practical Patty.
All I could think about was WHAT IF they didn't hold our reservation? WHAT IF, when we didn't arrive on the appropriate flight, they gave our suite away? And worse case scenario - what if we ended up having to pay the full $450.00 a day rate for the ten days of our trip?
Needless to say, we didn't give up our seats and we arrived on AA #667 on time. In the course of checking in, DH asked what would have happened if we'd not arrived on the scheduled flight they had in our reservation record. You wouldn't have wanted to see the look he gave me when the desk clerk told him, "no problem, Sir, we would have held the villa open for the full ten days since that's what the owner reserved!"
DH finally started talking to me again about day three of our trip. We never had that high an offer again and all the future over-sold trips we encountered, they were offering travel vouchers instead of spendable US dollars. Oh, well, live and learn...... <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/duh.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/duh.gif" alt="" />
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