Air hitchhiking
The original idea was to take advantage of my free time to explore some cheap travel options. A boat, I thought. Perhaps I could do this courier thing, giving up my luggage space to travel deliver a package in exchange for cheap airfare. Then the concept of airhitching came up during my searches, so I decided to give that a whirl.
The idea is interesting and has some progressive politics attached to it. The founder has tried to create a system (not a company) to liberate travelers (not customers) from the devices of corporate travel machines. Great – a refreshing idea. As you may surmise from their semi-coherent website, one must make a bit of effort in order to realize this noble goal.
Unfortunately, after an unsettling chat with the Airhitch staff, that experienced ended today. As it turns out, I am not the first to encounter difficulties.
Should have done my due diligence. The lesson here being, it might be worth it if you need to save a few bucks, but an organization that is antagonistic and pro-themselves isn’t really working towards the ground shaking social changes they profess to want.
A balanced perspective is offered here.
So, what will I do? Plan D: Take the cheapest fare offered by a bulk consolidator – a bit more expensive but much less hassle. Nairobi, here I come
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Perhaps it would be beneficial for all concerned (and it would definitely be more OBJECTIVE, we’re sure you’ll agree!) for you to post the literal text of the communication process which decided you to terminate “the experience”, and thru a collaborative analysis of it we can try to help people avoid wasting their time/energy with Airhitch® in the future unless there is a real solid chance it can really help them.
But note in passing that if as you say you can find a fare offered by a bulk consolidator which is only “a bit more expensive”, then there was no reason for you to even bother with Airhitch® in the first place, for the prime reason anyone ever hitchhikes is that they simply can’t afford to get where their going by any other means…no?
Hi Airhitch staff,
That was an unexpectedly quick response.
Below is the conversation that prompted me to seek an alternative to working with your organization. I don’t want to waste too much energy belaboring this point, but basically I did not feel comfortable with the attitude displayed by your staff. Specifically, the manner in which sensitive information was requested over an insecure chat connection. Although I had been trying to save money, I am willing to pay more (and forgo visiting another east African country, if that’s what it comes down to) for peace of mind.
I do, however, find the goals of your organization admirable. This is why I’ve posted links to your website and to the Frommer’s article, for readers to follow and make their own call.
Thanks very much for your feedback and help so far.
Our conversation:
10:07 AM airhitch: wb Matt
me: Hello.
10:08 AM airhitch: By the time we got someone free last nite, you had left, so we will continue now.
If you’re ready.
me: Please
airhitch: OK…
10:10 AM it appears that your research on one-ways has not turned up anything much less expensive than the round-trip NECO you at first came up with…
which is normal.
Because the airlines do not like one-way passengers, becuz they can’t control us.
me: OK.
That’s too bad, but not unexpected.
10:11 AM airhitch: Exactly, but we can help you do much better…that is (mostly) what we’re “here for”…i.e., our central and principal role/function.
10:12 AM me: That’s good to hear.
10:14 AM airhitch: We try to convey this on our website, but obviously in your case it has not gotten across too well; so if you have any suggestions for how it could be better conveyed, we would love to receive them.
10:15 AM me: Fair enough.
I will write you all a note a bit later.
10:17 AM airhitch: OK, now, in order to facilitate communications we are going to coach you into our AIM chatroom where more intellects can be present at once, than here in gmail chat.
me: Alright.
10:19 AM airhitch: Do you have an AIM screenname registered, perchance?
me: Unfortunately, I do not.
airhitch: It’s not that unfortunate, becuz u can easily register one at…
10:20 AM http://aimexpress.aim.com
10:21 AM Matt…r u there?
me: Yes, just finishing my registration
airhitch: Do NOT register “just any” AIM sn, if that’s what you are doing.
Which registration?
10:22 AM me: I was trying for AIM… but I’ve stopped.
Which AIM sn should I register?
10:23 AM airhitch: What is your middle initial and year of birth?
me: Would it be OK if I simply used a screen name of my choosing?
10:24 AM airhitch: Probably not, it would depend on whether your choosing conforms to the necessities of AH/AIM screenname construction and format.
10:25 AM me: The AIM screenname construction and format is:
“3-16 letters or numbers. It must start with a letter.”
I think I can do that.
airhitch: But that’s only a PART of the AH/AIM construction qnd format.
10:26 AM qnd=and
me: hm.
10:29 AM I’m going to give it a try, hope that’s OK.
airhitch: Wait…we don’t know if it’s ok or not, becuz…
we don’t know WHAT you are going to “give a try” to.
10:30 AM You did not answer our Q, above.
Remember, by not answering our Qs, you WASTE TIME AND ENERGY.
me: I generally do not give that information to anyone.
10:31 AM airhitch: Well, you will have to give it when you board an airplane…no one will board you without it.
me: And I fail to see what it has to do with registering at AIM.
airhitch: So if you’re not going to be willing to give it, that ends your AHing attempt RIGHT HERE.
We explained that to you.
Go back and read the above scroll for the answer to that Q.
OK, so it’s clear from the above that you did not feel comfortable revealing your identity. Unfortunately, because the ‘net is full of people, mostly teens, playing games, we will not deal with people anonymously, so that’s why (or ONE reason why) we ask for straightforward identification in the form of a self-identifying AIM screenname. It is in fact very rare that people refuse to give us their full name and the year of their birth, and it’s easy to understand why: first, as we pointed out right there in the dialogue, you would have to give more info than that in order to board any airplane; and secondly, most people (and we totally agree with them) see ZERO RISK in giving their name and the YEAR of their birth. No one could steal anyone’s identity with just those two data. Note we did not even ask for your DATE of birth, which is on your passport, which you must show to several people during the process of boarding an aircraft. We only asked for the YEAR. And the only reason we asked for your middle initial is that with a common name like “MATTHEW FLYNN”, it would be almost certain that among the hundreds of millions of registered AIM screennames, that name, MatthewFlynn and MattFlynn, are already taken by someone.
Due to staff-time priorities, we will not be commenting further unless we see comments from other visitors here, or some evidence that someone besides you and us is paying attention.
ooooooh! smack! That teaches you to mess with Airhitch. Hahaha.
The customer is always… right?
Not with these guys, apparently. But kudos for the bold strategy: browbeat the user into submission! Also, nice use of contempt and barely-suppressed rage.
Dan:
FYI:
1. We don’t have customers. We are NON COMMERCIAL and NON PROFIT. We are just travelers of a certain sort…who have banded together to defend our interests against the discriminatory pricing policies of the airlines.
2. We are not trying to browbeat anyone. Like you, we just have certain ways of doing things, and if you don’t want to do them that way, that’s fine, but then, don’t ask for our help.
3. “Contempt and barely-suppressed rage” are surmises on your part, totally out of touch with objective realities, and, it appears to us, a very amateurish attempt at applying freudian-like psychoanalysis via the Internet. NOT A GOOD IDEA.
Well, you certainly are defending your interests with vehemence. As for doing things a certain way; that’s an extremely poor excuse for maintaining a rather confrontational attitude with your patrons, customers, or anyone with whom you chose to interact, regardless of suitability of your language, or how you percieve that relationship.
In the mean time, I invite you to refrain from making nods towards veiled aggression. We are uninterested, and unintrigued as to what that ‘might’ mean. I also invite you to refrain from posting to this site if you feel like continuing to do so. Thanks for the quick responses as well as your willingness to maintain a rapport, but we’re not really interested in continuing this discussion any further.
1. “Vehemence” is a highly subjective and relative word, and also, in our opinion, inappropriate when applied to text appearing on a computer screen, especially if used in its negative connotation which it appears is the case here. You think we’re “vehement”, but that is mostly your own subjective perception, based on an extrapolation of what you fantasize is going on “behind” your computer screen. In fact the reality is quite different: this is rather humdrum and routine for us, and much of what we are inputting here is pasted boilerplate which has been developped across the years to try to — very UNvehemently, and, except in the case of eager-learning newcomers to our staff, rather tediously — correct the misperceptions of a public largely brainwashed by corporatism and especially by the airlines’ idiosyncratic version of such. But, if you insist on seeing us as “confrontational” (see paragraph 3 below) then you will probably interpret ANY attempt to explain or educate as such. Sorry, but there’s not much we can do about that, other than implore you to think harder.
2. “Excuse”: please note that we are not attempting to make “excuses” for anything, you are, as far as we can tell, mistaking explanation and education for “excuses” by superimposing an unwarranted moralistic tint over this whole discussion, and you might be wise to try to curb that tendency somewhat, in our humble opinion.
3. “Confrontational” is your subjective perception, and, in our opinion, quite inaccurate in terms of the underlying objective realities: we do not in the least have any desire to be “confrontational” other than to confront the abusive discrimination of airline marketing tactics against the budget unstructured exploratory traveler. Quite to the contrary, we look to build bridges to and establish bonds with all our fellow BUETs — to that precise end and for that precise purpose. It’s just that our bridge-building and bond-establishing efforts HAVE LIMITS. Few limits, but limits nonetheless. Again: “sorry about that”, but there’s nothing we can do about it…at least for the moment, and maybe, never.
4. We don’t know what “making nods towards veiled aggression” means, and so are unable to accept your invitation to refrain from it. If you care to delineate further what you mean here, we will try to defer to your wishes, precisely in order to avoid being “confrontational”. However, it does appear that, here again, you are making a kind of amateurish attempt at applying freudian-like psychoanalysis to text on a computer screen: NOT A GOOD IDEA, as we have suggested in a prior post, if your intent is to have your perceptions correspond to objective behavioral reality as closely as possible. And we suggest you take these as “words to the wise”, NOT as an attempt to be “confrontational”.
5. We also are having difficulty deciphering the meaning of the sentence “We are uninterested, and unintrigued as to what that ‘might’ mean”, largely due to the inadequate specificity of the referent of the pronoun “that”: we can tell that you are unintrigued by and uninterested in something, but it’s not clear exactly what the “something” is. However, we can assure you that unless what you are referring to has to do with budget unstructured exploratory air travel, we are equally unintrigued by and uninterested in it, so there’s something we can agree on and not be “confrontational” about, if you are willing.
6. Thanks for the invitation to refrain from posting here, which we are taking under consideration.
7. If you’re not interested in continuing the discussion, your course of action is clear: just stop posting. Simple, no? We won’t post anything from now on that does not constitute a response to remarks aimed directly at us, and/or remarks ABOUT us which are inaccurate in terms of objective underlying realities. In fact we’re not sure we have ever done anything OTHER than that. But we will make a redoubled, nay, HERCULEAN effort not to, henceforth.