🚀 go-pugleaf

The following message was passed on to me by a co-worker.

PLEASE DISTRIBUTE IT WIDELY!!!

------------------
This message contains information for anybody looking for cheap travel
to Europe. If you have heard of a company named AIRHITCH which promises
to take you to Europe and back for $160 each way, BE WARNED: it might
cost you a lot more. As you will read below, it costed us A LOT not just
in money but in misery as well.

THE AFTERMATH:

For those of you who read the first posting, I can tell you how it all
ended: VERY BADLY. Airhitch brought their lawyer to court and they
basically argued that since we had signed a contract waiving our rights to
get reimbursed for any expenditure we had made in the process of travelling
with them, we didn't have a right to get reimbursed for the ticket we
bought with a regular company to be able to get back to the US. Then
basically I couldn't prove anything of what I was saying, because they
argued that the notarized letters I had from many witnesses of the whole
tragedy couldn't be used as evidence.

And also, be very careful, because AIRHITCH doesn't really exist as such.
When you are buying a ticket from them you are not really doing business
with AIRHITCH but with some (non-profit!!) corporation called CIIE. I had
sued AIRHITCH, because, well that's who I believed I had been dealing all
along. So their lawyer had my suit invalidated by showing documents proving
that AIRHITCH simply didn't exist as a company .

In spite of all this, technically we won. The judge ordered CIIE to pay me.
Actually it was a disaster: all I could get was a jugement in my favor for
the $160 that I had paid for the voucher I couldn't use to come back.
Pretty pathetic, because this doesn't cover even I minimal portion of what
we spent in the trip and in the legal process.

But here's what is really outrageous. When I got in touch with them to
arrange to collect the money, they laughed at my face again telling
me to dream on, that I would not even get the $160 back. Enforcing
collection of the money won in a judgement against a company like that,
I've been told, is close to impossible, because being some sort of
cooperative, they don't have any asset in their name that could be seized
by the sheriff. And of course, for $160, why would anyone go into the
trouble of pushing this? Well, a sleazy company if I've ever seen one.

So, in short, if you wanto to risk it, just go for the AIRHITCH adventure.
If you want to avoid getting yourself into the unpleasant experiences we
had to go through, just be warned and continue reading these message for
more details.

------ INFORMATION ABOUT AIRHITCH ------------

      We are posting this message to the net as the last resort of two
frustrated and desperate people. We believe that letting other people
know about our experience (and that of many others) is the only way to
obtain some justice and to prevent other ingenuous or misinformed people
from going through the horrible experience we had to go through. That is
why we are asking you to not only read this message but also, if you
feel sympathetic to our plight or you think it is a just cause, to
please SPREAD IT AROUND, POST IT IN YOUR LOCAL NEWSGROUPS, WARN YOUR
FRIENDS, WRITE A SHORT MESSAGE TO AIRHITCH (2790 Broadway, Suite 100, New
York, NY, 10025) and thell them what you think. If you need or can provide
more information, or we might help you with more information, please
contact either one of us at:

            fontana@linc.cis.upenn.edu  (Josep M. Fontana)
            mcnally@ling.ucsc.edu .  (Louise McNally)

or regular mail:

	Josep M. Fontana
	2220 Walnut St. (Apt. 822)
	Philadelphia, PA 19103

	Louise McNally
	236 Walnut St.
	Santa Cruz, CA 95060

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WHAT THE COMPANY SAYS THEY OFFER:

      In the literature Airhitch makes available to the public, they say
that they are a service "best suited to persons who enjoy the experience
of travel for its own sake. It should not be used by people who have
more money than time, who have a lot of baggage, or who cannot live with
minor last-minute deviations from expected itineraries."

      Well, we thought, that's fine with us. What they fail to mention,
however, is that you are likely to need quite a bit of money to be able
to sustain yourself while traveling from city to city around Europe
trying to catch flights that were long overbooked or for which the
supply of tired AIRHITCH clients far exceeds the number of available
seats.

      The company claims to be essentially an intermediary between
customers looking for flights and airlines with empty seats to fill.
When you sign up, you provide a desired point of departure and
destination, along with a 5- to 7-day date range in which you want to
travel.  For $160 each way (from the East Coast), Airhitch then commits
itself to "act as agent for the passenger [...] for the purpose of
securing the transportation described thereon or as close an
approximation as possible". One thing Airhitch is very keen on
emphasizing in their literature is statistics. The flyer asserts that an
Airhitch passenger's chance of getting a flight during the date range
is, "[b]ased on past experience, excellent. In fact, perfect: this year
and last, 100% of all AIRHITCHers who followed our guidelines were
accommodated. And 98% of them were boarded on their first try!".

      Well, really, the burden of the proof is on them. All I know is
that judging by my experience and that of many others, this use of
statistics is, at best, completely misleading.

WHAT WE ACTUALLY GOT:

      In order to deliver on what they promise, Airhitch must provide
its customers with reliable information (otherwise, it is not clear what
it is doing to merit the $160/each way that it charges for being "their
agent"). But that is precisely what they did not do in our case.


      Last summer, after trying unsuccessfully to get on Airhitch-listed
flights that were leaving first from Madrid and then from Paris, my
girlfriend and I were told by an Airhitch agent in Paris that she was
sorry about the flights departing from Paris, but not to worry, because
we had a flight getting out of Milan which was "wide open" departing in
two days.  Since we had previously been told  that it was "highly
likely" that we would get seats on any of the two flights out of Paris,
we decided to call their office in Milan to confirm the availability of
the seats. There, one of their agents, named Vince, told us to go to
Milan, because we would be able to leave from there, there was plenty of
space in a couple of flights with Tower Air. This time we could leave
for sure, since there were 30 seats available.  OK, we were already
exhausted and still a little suspicious, but we decided to go since it
looked like we might finally be able to get back home.

      We travelled all night in a bus to get to Milan and wandered half
the next day around the city, hungry and tired (everything was "chiuso
per ferie" (closed for vacation). We tried to sleep in the train station
and got chased away by a policeman, so we had to spend our last money to
sleep in a Pensione (it was awfully hard to find one for a reasonable
price at that period).  The next day we got up at dawn to make it to the
airport, so that we could be first in line for seats on the Airhitch
flight.

      Upon arriving at Malpense Airport, we were shocked to learn from
the Tower Air agent that there were nearly 20 other people waiting in
line, some of whom had spent 2 nights already sleeping in the airport
(she had even fed some of them out of compassion!). Worse yet, this
Tower Air representative was  furious with Airhitch for continuing to
send people to her counter, when they should have known that all the
seats for those flights had been booked already for over a week! Then we
got to know the other "victims" of Airhitch who were in Milan's Airport
and began to hear the horror stories.

      All the stories basically coincided with our experience, but some
of them were much worse. Most of us had spend entire days trying to call
their offices in Europe. Anybody who has been in Europe knows it is not
easy or cheap to make long distance calls when you don't have a home.
But, the worst part of it was that the Airhitch representatives we
interacted with were consistently misinformed, often unavailable (many
times just an answering machine), and not infrequently rude and
obnoxious.

      The list of telephone numbers provided by AIRHITCH was yet another
source of misinformation. We tried to call one of their offices in
Germany several times and never got an answer (we kept on trying because
we wouldn't obtain any answer in the other offices either). Finally,
somebody answered the phone and said that AIRHITCH didn't have an office
there anymore. In fact, another person who was sharing our miseries in
Milan's Malpensa airport, found out that while we were all going through
that harrowing experience two offices, one in Paris and one in Bonn shut
down because the staff got fed up and left. The misinformation printed
in the cards had actually caused another person we met there to go
through a very unpleasant experience.

      The guy in question, Tim,  had travelled to Athens, Greece. When
he tried to phone the AIRHITCH office in Athens, he was told that
AIRHITCH did not operate in Athens, and had not for several months!, in
spite of the fact that that number was listed on the card that AIRHITCH
gave him when he purchased his vouchers (which was the same card that we
all had).  From Athens, and after a lot of distress, he managed to
contact other AIRHITCH European offices and was told that he could find
a flight if he went to Milan (if you have been in Europe, you know that
traveling from Athens to Milan is not the easiest thing). Once he
arrived in Milan, he found out that there were no seats available and
was told by the Airhitch representative to go to Paris. Once there, he
was told that there were no seats available for AIRHITCH costumers on
the flights out of Paris either. He had called the office in Milan
again, and there he was told that there were "30 seats available" on
flights going out of Milan. And there he was, waiting to get on one of
those 30 phantom seats like the rest of us.

      Another pair of "victims" we met there, a pregnant woman and her
husband, had tried their first flight in Milan, and had also been sent
from Milan to Paris by one of the Airhitch coordinators who told her she
would most likely be able to catch a plane from there. Then she had been
also sent back to Milan, where we all were. Later, through one of the
people we met and with whom we have kept in touch, we found out that the
pregnant woman and her husband had to go to Oslo and then to L.A! And
all this only to get from Rome to New York!

      I had to be back in the US in two days to start a new job, so,
totally exhausted, desperate, and out of cash, we decided to get a
flight with a reputable airline. Not an easy task. Finally we found two
seats on a Pan Am flight, but at the cost of $1000 each just one way! We
discussed it for a long time since we could not really afford that
expenditure given our financial situation, but we were so tired and so
desperate that eventually decided that there was no other way: our last
resort was a credit card that luckily Louise had with her. The prospects
of being stranded in an Airport without money to buy food or move around
were pretty scary. Saying we were exhausted and desperate is really not
an exaggeration. As far as we were able to determine, there were no
flights with open seats in our date range. This was a Monday, and
AIRHITCH offices in Europe would not be open until Wednesday.  Besides,
really!, why bother calling them? where would they send us next time?.
Anywhere we went there were bound to be hoards of other Airhitch
passengers who were in worse shape than we were, ahead of us in line for
those seats which didn't exist. In most of the cases the situations were
very similar: people whose money had run out a while ago and were
sleeping in train stations, airports and begging for money and food
(this was actually happening). The people we found in Milan were very
lucky to find a compassionate Tower Air representative who took some of
them home and fed them and let them make phone calls. So, with great
pain, we decided to use the credit card and purchase the Pan Am tickets.
We are still in debt from the whole catastrophe.

      In conclusion, due to either bad faith or negligence, Airhitch
failed blatantly to fulfill its part of the agreement. They not only
didn't help us to obtain any kind of transportation, but they
misinformed us on repeated occasions, causing us to disburse a
considerable amount of extra money (long distance calls, transportation,
food and accomodations) and to go through some very unpleasant
experiences.


HOW THE COMPANY DEALS WITH COMPLAINS

      Our interpretation of the contract and the circumstances led us to
conclude that Airhitch should reimburse us for the cost of the airfare
we had to pay to get back to the U.S. In fact, we really think that
AIRHITCH is responsible for much more: not for the extra amount of money
we had to spent in transportation and accomodation traveling between
distant cities chasing around inexistant "sure things", but they should
in fairness compensate us for the enormous amount of stress and misery
we had to go through because of their negligence and irresponsability.
We are not naive, though, and we know that Kafka was not really far from
being a descriptive writer in his accounts of bureaucratic institutions.
Try the New York court system if you don't believe me! (although in
fairness, I have to say that the judges and arbitrators that I saw in
action in the NY Civil Court system were great and seemed to be very
fair, this in spite of the far from desirable situation they have to
operate in: lack of support, overcrowding, etc.) In summary, trying to
get what we think we deserved was pretty unrealistic, much more if you
don't have money to pay for a good lawyer. Eventually, however, after a
whole year of frustration trying to deal with AIRHITCH, we sued them in
small claims court.  But the problems we went through before suing, and
continue to have now, further underscore the disreputable manner in
which this company does business.

      Between August 1990, when we first complained to them, and June
1991, when we finally sued in the New York City Small Claims Court, we
experienced only rudeness and threats. The employees we talked to would
often say that nobody in the Claims department was available at the
moment and instruct us to leave a message in an answering machine.  When
we did, though, quite a few times the response was slow or they simply
would not return our calls.  We persisted, and finally managed after a
long time to talk to the Claims department. This turned out to be
useless. On two occasions they simply hung up on us. On a number of
other occasions they asked us for a phone number where we could be
reached and promised to call us back. We wouldn't get the promised
calls. When we wrote a letter detailing the problems we had when trying
to return from Europe, a company representative wrote back telling us
that we would have to send her our original vouchers (not xeroxes),
along with a complete list of the flights we tried to take, and that if
we complied, a refund (of the $160!) would be CONSIDERED, though not
guaranteed.  We found the first of these conditions unacceptable (it
would mean forfeiting any proof that we had not actually used the
vouchers without giving us in exchange any guarantee that we would get a
refund). Finally, totally frustrated and bitter we suggested to them
that we might get legal advice.  We were laughed at and warned that it
was pointless for us to try. They had good and experienced lawyers. We
would waste our time and money and wouldn't get a penny from them.
Sadly, I have to confess that as things are going so far, they might
turn to be right.

COROLARY:

      The stories we've heard afterwards about how people tried to get
back to the US are pretty amazing, and show the degree of desperation
those AIRHITCH customers had reached: some who were U.S nationals begged
for money to get transportation from the airport and went to the
American consulate and asked diplomatic officials to give them some
money or some transportation to be able to get back to the US. Some had
tried to travel with cargo companies. Some had tried the US army,
begging them for transportation in military planes to go back to the US.
A small group went skinny dipping at midnight hoping to be caught and
deported. Later, ironically I found out that, at about the same time, a
good friend of mine was in Stuttgart, placed eleventh on a list of
AIRHITCH customers which eventually totaled thirteen ( many of whom had
previously attempted to board AIRHITCH flights in other airports). Only
three eventually made the flight. My friend wasn't one of them. He got
tired and also used his credit card to buy a regular ticket back to
Philadelphia.


      But the list of AIRHITCH related "misfortunes"  doesn't stop here.
It has even reached the newspapers. In the June 30th issue of the NYT,
in the travel section, you'll find an article narrating another AIRHITCH
sad story. Three Minnesota students, one of them a 16 year old, had been
also stranded in Europe after attempting unsuccessfully to get back to
the US with AIRHITCH. They wound up spending $500 in phone bills to call
home. The mother of two of them sent $2500 for them to buy a TWA ticket.
The parents tried to get a refund from the company, but they did not
succeed even in getting the $229 they had paid for each voucher. The
mother of one of them, Ms. Bekun has complained to the New York Attorney
General's office, and later she found out that Airhitch had not
responded and therefore that office could not pursue the matter further.
According to the journalist, the spokeswoman for the Attorney General
said that the file on Airhitch for 1990-91 contained six complaints.

      Well, that's our experience and the experience of others in
traveling with AIRHITCH. Our time and means of spreading this
information are pretty limited, and we think it is important that people
should know about this before considering traveling with this company.
Again, we appeal to you to help spreading this information. If you can
post it to a local newsgroup that we cannot reach (specially important
areas that Airhitch targets are New York and L.A) that will be of great
help. If you know people who work in newspapers, or other publications
(specially youth and student publications) and who could publish an
article related to this issue, please contact us. We will send you a lot
of information we have collected: letters and affidavits of people who
have experienced the situations we have described, newspaper articles,
airhitch flyers and documents, etc.


           Josep M. Fontana    and  Louise McNally


Thanks for your time and consideration.


----- End Included Message -----


----- End Included Message -----