I had a weird experience last night. But first, a little background.
For the past couple weeks I've been checking airfares to go to
Gen Con this August. Cramming myself into a coach seat for a long flight just
isn't a good idea, so for the past few years, I've compared the price of two coach seats vs. the cost of a single first class ticket. In each case, FC was almost exactly the same as two coach, so I've flown FC for the extra benefits.
I wanted to see if that trend continued this year and it seemed to. Late last night I decided to actually buy my tickets and after checking several sites, I found that Delta.com (with whom I have a frequent flyer [flier?] account) had the best prices, but I was having problems getting the return flight time I wanted. I called their reservation line and got an operator who literally sounded like she just woke up. After telling her my flight dates, she said the cheapest fair was a red-eye. I don't want to sleep on the plane (because I twitch & snore), so I asked for a later flight. For the times I wanted to travel, she quoted me a price that was literally double what the web site showed. So I resigned myself to just dealing with the times the web site offered.
After I had been off the phone with the res agent for a few minutes, I realized I never heard the price for her "cheapest option". I figured I'd call back and see how cheap it was and make a decision based on that price. This time I got a cheery, very much awake agent. I explained what had happened before and she looked up flight times for me. She got the exact times I wanted, a non-stop flight for my return (WooHoo!), and for the same price showing on delta.com.
So I can't help but wonder, what was up with the first agent...?