Yep, exactly lemidi. In hindsight, not only was my error in transposing my cities a big mistake, but buying the tickets from Skybus was even worse. (When I do something idiotic, I do it up big, apparently!) Anyway that's the reason I'm sharing it here. To remind others to be careful, and make sure there is fine print to read first! (Odd, used to always think that "reading the fine print" would be the thing to save me, not just making sure it's there in the first place! :))

However, I will never agree with NewbE that a company posting its rules and then not honoring them is a "technicality." But we'll have to agree to disagree there I guess.

I had a charter company fold the week before my scheduled trip. Yes, I got my refund...NO I couldn't find any deals on tickets at that date and I had all the other arrangements done. So I agree...with the comments from the OP and the queasy feeling I get about them, I wouldn't purchase a ticket in advance either!!

Well, I think the only reason that might entice me to try this.....the $10 Meat Loaf Plate.....I never had meat loaf before I ate at a Black Eyed Pea Restaurant in Dallas some years ago....It was NOT $10....I dont think its even close to that today!!

Beachboi, now that's just adding insult to injury! What's going to happen when I break it to my sister that she can't have the meatloaf plate?

By the way, I am still searching the website (hence the run-in with the meatloaf plate) and there seems to be no way to cancel a reservation, even though they explicitly say that you can. I emailed them a few hours ago and I haven't heard back, but assume this will be another round of "we didn't really mean it..."

LB...I cannot tell you how meaningful your "mistake" has been.Many of my friends come to me for travel advice...Well, other things do....No, I am NOT "Dear Stephen".....but I can tell you that I willl NOT be sending anyone to Skybus.Wasnt there a PeoplesExpress back in the Dark Ages? The guy running SkyBus was an exec with the gone-by-the-wayside Eastern Airlines.I dont hold out much hope, but you have been most helpful.

And Luna, more than their so-called change policy not being honored, I am really bothered by that fact that they are so grossly taking advantage of an obviously honest error.

This is why I get so nervous when it's time to fill in the blanks and hit the enter key when booking flights. We should not be made to feel this stress when booking simple airline tickets.

I already hate that the airlines have the upper hand with the nonrefundable tickets, change fees and all the other fine print blah, blah, blah...but yours was clearly not a change of plans but an error. Ugh, this burns me.

I hope your credit card company will honor your dispute if you supply a copy of all e-mails and then copies of your new Delta tickets. Good luck.

Glad to be of service! Oh wait... :)

The craziest part too - and this is the cherry on top - is that I tried to give them MORE money to fix my error (to the tune of $160) and get the flights I needed and they wouldn't take it. What kind of business plan is that? The whole thing baffles me on so many levels I just have trouble taking it all in.

Oh, I so feel for you.

I had thought the Skybus boys were copying the RyanAir business model from Europe. Is that correct ?

Update: Despite the fact that it says all over Skybus's website that you can CANCEL your reservation (and lead you to believe that you can do exactly what Beachboi outlined earlier about cancellations), when I requested to cancel my ticket, below is the reply I got. This is in addition to their misleading wording about CHANGING your ticket. Does anybody know a good lawyer?

"Thank you for contacting Skybus.

Please note that, all Skybus fares are non-refundable. There are only two exceptions:

-You may request a refund if we cancel a flight (for example, due to bad weather).

-Any refunds requested prior to May 11, 2007, which is when Skybus received our federal certification to fly, will be honored.

Although refunds are not allowed, you may change your Skybus Trip for a $40 change fee per passenger, per flight segment – plus any fare difference if the new fare is higher (there is no refund if the new fare is lower). From the Skybus Home Page, click the “View/Change Reservation” tab in the lower left portion of the screen, then enter the requested information and click the “go” button.

Please note that “Extras” like Priority Boarding, Trip Insurance, and Flight Status Alerts are also non-refundable."

OMIGOD! HOW CAN THEY SAY RIGHT THERE IN BLACK AND WHITE ON THEIR WEBSITE THAT TICKETS CAN BE CANCELLED, AND THEN FOLLOW IT UP WITH THIS CRAP AFTER THE TICKET HAS BEEN PURCHASED!?!

Wow, I was trying my hardest not to go to their website but I am going now just to see all this...

...of course we have all looked at their website! Plugged a few times and routes in there, too....LOLOL!

Okay, on to the next step! I officially registered my complaint with the Better Business Bureau today and have asked for a full refund.

I mean let's face it: even if I were able to twist their arm, begging and pleading with them to let me give them more money (lots more money!) to be treated like crap on their big cattle drive in the sky, there is absolutely no way in he*l I would ever get on - or let my relatives get on - a Skybus airplane. So no point in trying to beat that dead horse.

In addition to the $500 I have already paid Skybus, I tried to pay them an additional $160 (plus possible additional costs, if the fares for a round trip itinerary for CMH-SEA came out to be a higher cost than SEA-CMH) to change my current, unusable itinerary. They would not help me.

I then tried to pay them an additional $160 (plus possible additional costs) to cancel my current, unusable itinerary and replace it with one I can actually use. They would not help me.

Their website says I can change OR cancel my ticket. And their employees acknowledge the fact that they don't give the consumer the real rules beforehand because it's too hard to list them all. Unconscionable, unbelievable.

Not only are they liars, they are idiots. What kind of company wouldn't take loads more money for a person to make things somewhat right for everybody, but really really right for themselves?

Yep I made a mistake. But I went into this thing thinking that if (a) I made a mistake, or (b) needed to change my itinerary down the road, I would be able to for a fee, based on the false information they're providing on their site.

If there's any justice in the world their pants will all be catching on fire right...about...NOW!

Luna, sorry, but I have to disagree w/you on just about all points. If you did any kind of even cursory news search prior to buying your tickets, you would have seen that Skybus, as others have pointed out, is modeled on Ryanair. If you continue & do a news search on Ryanair, you'll pull up a plethora of stories about their draconian policies. Multiple news stories have made it clear that Skybus has no customer service lines, they have no interline agreements with other carriers, you pay a fee for just about everything, and on and on.

In air travel, the bottom line is the airline's Contract of Carriage, which is almost always buried away on some obscure part of their web site. Here's the pertinent ones on Skybus':

Refunds

All Skybus reservations are non-refundable, except in the following circumstances:

Flight cancellations and schedule changes-
a. You will be entitled to a refund of any unused portion of fare, if your flight is cancelled on or before the date of travel, or is delayed or rescheduled for more than 3 (three) hours before or after the original departure time.
b. If no portion of your reservation has been used, this refund shall constitute the fare paid plus any associated taxes, fees and charges paid to Skybus.
c. If a portion of your reservation has been used, the refund shall be not less than the difference between the fare paid and the applicable fare for travel between the points for which the reservation has been used plus any associated taxes, fees, and charges paid in respect of that part of the journey not undertaken.

6. Fares and Reservations

6.1 Fares
Fares apply only for carriage from the airport of origin to the airport of destination.

6.2 Flight Changes
Flight dates and times within the same city pair are changeable subject to availability upon payment of a change fee of $40.00 (forty dollars) (or local currency equivalent), per person, plus any additional fare difference. If the total price is lower on the new flight, no refund will be made. Changes, subject to availability, can be made up to thirty (30) minutes prior to the originally scheduled departure time of your outbound journey on www.skybus.com.

There you go. Chalk this one up to "buyer beware" -- you need to FULLY research what you are getting into PRIOR to purchasing a ticket.

I booked a weekend fare special on DL a few years ago from DCA - CMH. I entered the wrong date. DL did not change my reservations, as per the terms of the fare. I had to buy a whole new ticket. Most carriers will change a mistake if asked to immediately after booking, but when it comes down to it, virtually all have policies stating that their cheap fares are nonrefundable, nonchangeable, etc.

If you want to argue that Skybus is not employing a good customer service model, then fine. But if you had done your homework, you would have realized that they are not for people who want good (i.e. traditional legacy carrier) service; they are for people who want ultra-cheap fares and who are willing to make drastic sacrifices to get them. It's like going into Wal-Mart and expecting Neiman-Marcus service. Sorry!

Well this is good because this is the part I could never find, and you're right about changing origin cities.

However, nowhere in that wording does it say anything restricting my ability to cancel my flight. In another section of the website it specifically says I CAN cancel my flight, for $40 a segment. (Not to confuse this with a refund. Simply paying the ding fees and being able to apply the original balance to the new itinerary. I didn't ask for a refund.) I'm still convinced there's a lapse there.

However, fortunately/unfortunately it's not up to either of us, at this point. Still got my fingers crossed for the BBB!

My family and I have a set of $10 flights booked on Skybus (St Augustine/Columbus) in September (if they last that long).

We have flown on Ryanair, Easyjet and Skyeurope in Europe before and we are prepared for the cattlecar treatment. Skybus may be taking it to a higher level of abuse in that the flight attendants seem to be paid comission to sell food ,drinks, pillows and blankets ( I'm going to take earplugs this time).
Your experience is the sort of thing one expects when one deals with Ryanair, but one would think that a startup company would want to generate some goodwill. Perhaps a copy of the reactions on this thread sent to the appropriate Skybus management would help your situation.

For what we paid, I wasn't concerned with the change policies. I just hope we can go, and more importantly, come back more or less on time...
Rick

Just read through all of this.

Am I missing something? I understand them to say you can't change arrival and departure cities but can't you change the dates for the flight?

Can you change the date for flight 270 to August 9th and change the date for flight 271 to August 20th??

Wouldn't that get what you need done and for the $40 fee per segment?

Maybe I am not getting it, but I thought I would put this out there, just in case.
Debi

Debi, this would have worked, had it been in the same city pair (i.e. SEA-CMH). Luna wanted to book CMH-SEA, thus, it does not apply, as per the terms of the Contract of Carriage.

Luna, unfortunately, unless they state something completely contradictory to what their Contract of Carriage says, the Contract reigns supreme over anything else. Sorry!

LT - I hear you, but I don't think that's the effect of what Debi is suggesting. She's not changing the city pair. It's still SEA - CMH and in fact the departure/arrival cities stay the same. It's just the dates that get changed. So the SEA to CMH gets changed from 8/9 to 8/20 and CMH to SEA gets changed from 8/20 to 8/9.
Mission accomplished. Right Debi?

Dfr and Debi you both may be right because I think the skybus fares are one way fares and are not contingent upon booking round trip. SO, if in fact they are one way fares simply booked for convenience on one ticket then technically one should be able to change the dates as you both have suggested.

Hi all - Actually I tried what Debi suggests when I first realized the error but their website won't let you do it. (It only sees SEA as the departure city, so the date of the flight leaving SEA must be before the date of the flight leaving CMH.)

LT - No need to be sorry! Not to sound cryptic, but think this will all be worked out very soon and I'll post the result as soon as it's complete. (Don't want to get the cart in front of the horse.)

Thanks for all of the input everybody, and special thanks to those of you who have tried to help me think of solutions to my problem! I appreciate it.

One last thought -- did you try to change the date on flight 270 FIRST and then change the date on 271 second?

I am trying to think of something to salvage your flights and $$.

Just a quick footnote to all of this. Our daughter goes to college 35 mi NE of Columbus. She's home for the summer (and working!!!). Her boyfriend goes to college in Boston. She announced last night that she had found this great new airline that has $10-20 fares between Columbus and Boston (don't have to tell you which one). I told her I had been researching them for several months (which I have) and explained to her their severe restrictions etc, including your experience Luna. Might work for a college kid's budget IF they fully understand the rules, pitfalls, etc.

So Luna, thanks for sharing. Let us know what happens.

Why am I having a problem with this?

If you are not changing the two cities that you are flying into/outof...then just pay the $40 to change the dates....the flight #'s are the same....just the dates are different.

Is there any rule that says you can't reverse the dates on the departure times?

I guess that I will double check before I hit the enter key on their website.

Thanks for the tip... sorry you're having such a terrible time.

Thanks again to everyone for weighing in, and for all of the help and suggestions! For those of you who have been following my saga, I just wanted to report that SKYBUS REFUNDED MY MONEY. All of it. Hallelujah!

And I very well could literally have all of you to thank. I'm not sure what the real clincher was or what made them decide to give me my money back (I got a message from Skybus's VP of Finance, Barry Barnard, before the BBB contacted them, apparently) but in Mr. Barnard's message, he specifically alluded to a problem a "LunaBella" was posting about on Fodor's and how they wanted to fix my problem. (Some of you had suggested that I email the heads of the company - which I did last week - and milemarker0 was kind enough to post their email addresses, btw milemarker, thanks!) So THANK YOU EVERYBODY! I couldn't have done it without you, and I think that actually may be the truth.

So, I guess in the end, there is some measure of customer service to Skybus after all. However, I'll temper this with the fact that even during my email correspondence with Mr. Barnard I was also receiving messages like the ones below from the customer service people at Skybus, despite the fact that their website says that I can cancel my reservation:

"Thank you for your inquiry. Our tickets are non re-fundable, however you can make changes to confirmed reservation on our website. Currently we do not offer an option an option to cancel."

And this one that I now happen to like best but at the time, as you can imagine, I did not find humorous at all: "Since the tickets are non-refundable, changes cannot be made after flight date. Therefore, if you wish to change the date and not lose the value of the ticket, but you don't know the date you wish to travel, we would recommend that you move the flight far enough forward in time to the point at which you will know your new travel date, and then move it again to that travel date. Each change will incur change fees and any applicable differences in fare, so you may want to consider purchasing a new ticket
altogether once you know your new travel date (and ignore your current reservation)."

Yes, sage advice indeed. Anyway, this is the post that I really need to share with you (and I feel bad posting this under a heading of "I HATE Skybus!" because they did make it right for me - after much haggling - but right for me nonetheless). Too bad I can't amend the header at this point! However, I'm guessing this post will die down soon, there's not a lot more to add and I knew that those of you who are interested in how this turned out would look here for the answer. So here it goes:

LunaBella -

"Ken Gile forwarded to me an email to send to him regarding an unfortunate experience a “LunaBella” encountered when trying to make a reservation at Skybus. We are very sorry she encountered the problems she did and can only say her request to change city direction is a very reasonable request and we are putting in place the processes and procedures to enable a customer to do this in the future. We would be happy to refund her the tickets she purchased or change the reservation she has to the correct one if you want. Please send either the confirmation number and name and we will do which ever you would like.

Again we apologize for the bad experience."

Barry G. Barnard
VP - Finance and Treasurer
Skybus Airlines, Inc.

And they did. They refunded my money the very next day. Thank you Skybus!

Congratulations!

Great news. I had a problem 5+ yrs ago and got no where with the company till I posted about it in Fodors. Looks like bad publicity gets attention. Have fun with your sister.

This is good news.

In this age of "point and click" and instant gratification, I have found that a well written, compelling letter frequently works when directed to those who have the power to make things right.

Speaking of which, I need to write one to the CEO of Choice hotels.

There is a thread on Flyertalk about Skybus. There is quite a bit of pessimism expressed there, but several Skybus flyers have had good flights with them.

Rick (looking forward somewhat to his cheap trip on Skybus)

Good luck Rick!

Also, I left out the most important "thank you," and this one is to Fodor's for providing the forum! As a more tangible expression of my gratitude though, I'm going to go buy a new Fodor's travel guide to add to my collection. The big question is though, which one should I buy!? Hmmm, maybe Czech Republic, maybe Croatia, maybe just get an updated one on Italy, decisions decisions...

LunaBella-

So, the question is after all this...are you going to rebook this flight on Skybus or at least be will ing to try them later?

Rick

Good for you LunaBella!!!

Glad you received your money.

Apparently someone in management realized you brought forth a "real" problem that needed fixing.

And also recognized the power of bad publicity.

Glad to see some business ethics.

Good job.

LunaBella,
This same thing happened to me!! I booked Columbus-->Ft. Lauderdale over Thanksgiving. My confirmation page was correct, but the email confirmation Skybus sent had the cities flip flopped! It had me leaving from Ft. Lauderdale instead of Cols and vice versa on the return. I freaked. I'm a seasoned traveler and there's no way I made this mistake.

I emailed Skybus as soon as I noticed the error (about a week later). They sent me that same form response you got. Then I wrote again and told them I didn't want to change my flight reservation--I wanted them to correct their software glitch. They then sent me a corrected itinerary that reflected what I thought I originally booked.

It made for a couple of tense days--and I still don't have complete faith that the reservations will be accepted when I arrive at the airport that day. But I don't think I have any other way of confirming the flights. I am in possession of a corrected itinerary. That should be enough, right?

But believe me, LunaBella, I feel your pain!!!

I did not post on this thread but read it with much sympathy, and then emailed skybus on your behalf. I am sure many others did as well. Just wanted them to know that we take this stuff very seriously.

Now LunaBella -- be careful not to take the Fodor's book on Czechoslovakia from the back of the bookshelf!

Wow mm127, I wonder if there is a glitch in their software! That's quite a coincidence. And although I can't ever be 100% confident that it wasn't my error (and I'll never know), as I said earlier, I reviewed the itinerary something like three times over the phone with my sister before I hit the shiny, candy-like "confirm" button to buy the tickets. And probably like you, I've done it so many times before with no problems whatsoever. Well either way, I hope your travel goes without a hitch, and that your problem is truly corrected! I've got my fingers crossed for you, because I shudder to think what kind of customer service they have (or of course do not have, which is the problem, now isn't it?) at the airport. Good luck to you, I wish you well.

bugswife - Thanks for the email! It's good to know that there are people out there willing to do such a generous thing on another's behalf (even if for the good of the whole, or maybe a little of both), and it's also great to know that it sometimes works! As I said earlier, I think this forum may very well be the reason I got my money back.

rs899 - I think you missed the part (quite understandably, this is a long thread!) where I said we already bought replacement tickets on Delta. These tickets were for my sister and her daughter and I couldn't leave them hanging during the few weeks it took to get this sorted out. Now as to whether or not I would ever fly on Skybus...hmmm...maybe with one of those $10 tickets? Still not sure though. Maybe if they paid me $10. Or maybe if the tickets were free and I had just downed a few cocktails and they promised I could have the whole row to myself, along with some free cocktails on the plane, and, oh wait, definitely if they did all that, then threw in a complimentary meatloaf plate! In that case I would be all over it...

I recently flew from Burbank to Columbus on Skybus. When I checked in, I asked if the flight was on time. The gate agent responded "I don't know". Even though the inbound should have been in the air for over two hours. Sometime later a passenger arrived at the gate and said she was told they were running 45 minutes late. 30 minutes before scheduled departure, a Skybus employee anounced that the plane was about 30 minutes late, but because they could turn around quickly, departure and arrival should still be close to schedule. The inbound was actually almost an hour late. We departed one and a half hour late. At one point the pilot anounced that we were 40 minutes from Columbus, we arrived 90 minutes after that anouncement.

The plane was nice. The flight attendants were reasonable. They were sold out of about half the food as they do not cater the plane in Burbank.

Skybus is not Southwest. They aren't even close to competent.