The answer to all travel problems: prank phone calls

By: Seamus O'Connor

Posted: 10/11/06

I travel frequently. I used to book my flights through STA Travel. Not anymore.

This Sunday, I found a cheap fare on STA and attempted to purchase it. Its Web site kept giving me an error message despite repeated tries. By Monday, the situation had not changed, so I called its help line and spoke to a young Italian man who apparently had no patience for, you know, customers looking to book travel.

Italian boy suggested the flight had possibly sold out and the site just hadn't updated yet.

Me: But the fare's been on there for over 24 hours!

Him: Why didn't you buy it 24 hours ago, then?

Me: (steam bursts comically from ears; a train whistle sounds)

Apparently, STA doesn't want to "book you a flight" so much as "have a snooty European give you sass." Wholly enraged, I decided on a mature, responsible reaction: prank call the hell out of them.

My first victim was Michelle (not her real name), who was actually quite polite:

SO: Hi, I'm a senior in college and I wanted to plan myself a vacation as a graduation gift. But I have a problem: you guys don't list any flights to Tajikistan.

STA: (Pause) I don't think we have any tickets in there.

SO: Really, nothing into Tajikistan?

STA: Sorry, no, I'm not really … usually, that part of the world is tough to get into.

SO: Man, people really hate the 'stans, huh?

STA: They don't hate them, they just don't go there. We pretty much have fares for parts of the world for making money. I guess the people who make our airline reservations don't really care.

(Interestingly, she never bothered to ask why exactly I wanted to go to Tajikistan, so my great joke about "scoring some cheap Soviet heroin" went tragically by the wayside. But note to Kanye West: STA Travel does not care about Tajik people.)

SO: OK, well, the other place I wanted to go to was the Federated States of Micronesia. But I can't decide if I would rather go to the Kapingamarangi Island or to the Mortlock Isalnds. I think Kapingamarangi would be more like a resort, but my hunch about the Mortlock Islands is it's actually the Morlock Islands. You know, Morlocks, those blue people from that movie about the time machine?

STA: Uh, yeah, no, I don't know that movie?

SO: It's based on the H.G. Wells book.

STA: Oh, H.G. Wells. Sorry, really early in the morning for me.

SO: Ah.

On my next try, I got Mike (not his real name. His real name is Matt.). Mike, like his Italian coworker, was absolutely dead-set against booking me a vacation. I guess STA stands for "Stop Traveling, A-hole."

SO: Hello! I have a great idea for a travel tour and I would like to be your first customer.

You fly people out to the Great Barrier Reef and give them a guided snorkeling tour. Then they have to find the stingray that killed Steve Irwin. If they bring it back dead or alive, they get the whole trip for free.

STA: (Long pause) Great.

SO: Well can you do it?

STA: Nope. Is there a point to this?

SO: Yes, I want a flight! Can you help me book the snorkeling trip?

STA: Those are individually based. You could book those online.

SO: But no dice on the stingray thing, huh?

STA: Is that supposed to be a joke? It's kind of a bad-humor joke.

Bad humor? More like billion-dollar idea that you just passed up on, Matt. I mean Mike.

The moral is, I'm never using STA Travel again and neither should you. Thanks to their terrible customer service, I have no flight to Chicago and Steve Irwin's killer is still at large.

Seamus O'Connor is the author of "'Everyone is Special' and Other Dangerous Childhood Myths." Email him at sroconno@syr.edu.