HOPE THIS GETS TO YOU...

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sekula, Marc [SMTP:Marc_Sekula@bmc.com]
> Sent: Thursday, September 16, 1999 6:00 AM
> To: 'GDavid@mdck.com'
> Cc: 'ESager@enron.com'
> Subject: FULL REPORT
>
> Gail,
>
> How's Ms. Kitty?  We will moving to a different hotel in Stockholm on
> Friday.  We are currently staying at Hotel Ornskold, Nybrog 6, 11434
> Stockholm, Sweden. Phone 0114686670285.  Our new hotel will be: Hotell
> Diplomat, Strandv. 7C, s10440.
> Telephone 46-8-663 58 00.
>
> The first leg of our flight left Houston 3 hours late.  We missed the
> connection to Amsterdam here in Newark.  Continental Airlines had no
> information or other assistance prepared for all its Boeing 777 passengers
> deplaning here at 11:00 p.m. in Newark's airport.
>
> By 12:00 a.m., we learned we had already been re-booked for the same
> flight
> one DAY later (without consulting us, I might add).  After we finally made
> it through the line of other angry travelers, Continental informed us they
> weren't required to, but were going to generously put us up in the closest
> hotel that had rooms available.   Saddle Brook, New Jersey.  Howard
> Johnson's Motel.
>
> What could we do?  They claimed there were no other hotel accommodations
> available.  We went out to the end of the Monorail line where the ticket
> agent had told us there would be a shuttle service waiting to take us the
> 30-minute drive to the hotel.  It was raining.  And it was now 1:30 a.m.
>
> Which would have  been fine, except for the fact that there was no
> shuttle.
> And there never was going to be a shuttle.  It turns out, it just doesn't
> exist.  But we didn't learn of this until 2:30 a.m. (it's still raining at
> 2:30 a.m.)
>
> So we trekked back into the terminal, where (naturally) the person who had
> told us to use the shuttle was, by now, home and in bed and couldn't be
> reached.  We decided to take a cab anyway, risking the fact that there
> might
> not be a room available for us, there might not be a Howard Johnson's
> Motel
> in Saddle Brook, New Jersey, and, in fact, there might not even be a
> Saddle
> Brook, New Jersey.
>
> There is, as it turns out, a Saddle Brook, New Jersey.  And there is a
> Howard Johnson's Motel there.  (Now think about the image in your head as
> to
> what a Howard Johnson's motel room looks like.  I have no doubt that you
> hit
> the nail on the head:  everything you would think it would be, and a lot,
> lot cheaper.)But at least Continental Airlines gave us these very nice
> vouchers for a free lunch at Howard Johnson's Motel for the next day.
>
> Which would have been fine, except for the fact that Howard Johnson's
> doesn't serve lunch.  And again, it's raining, and there are no cabs in
> Saddle Brook, New Jersey.  So, we decided to walk 6 blocks in the rain to
> a
> local breakfast place that had been suggested by the 3'7" hotel clerk at
> Howard Johnson's (I'm not even going to go into that one.)  The clerk had
> suggested this breakfast place, and it was exactly what you'd expect to
> find
> in a town that smells like dead fish and machine lubricants.  The waitress
> talked to the guy at the next table about divorcing her husband of 26
> years,
> while the guy she was talking to said he was going to "O.J. my wife."  And
> you can get your eggs any style you want:  scrambled or sunny-side up.
> Poached?  No.  Hardboiled?  No.  Soft-boiled?  No.  But any style you
> want.
>
>
> We are definitely in New Jersey.
>
> Continental Airlines, after learning of their earlier lies, volunteer to
> give us a shuttle ride back to the airport this afternoon, on this bus
> they
> hired to go through Saddle Brook, New Jersey to pick up their various
> stranded passengers.  The bus indeed did pick us up on time, and we began
> ride back to beautiful Newark.
>
> Which would have been fine, except for the Mack truck we rear-ended on the
> New Jersey turnpike.
>
> Now, Gail, you know I'm not clever enough to make this stuff up.
>
> And our latest run-in with the customer service people in, it turns out,
> the
> Denver, Colorado office of Continental Airlines (led by Scott Sims, just
> for
> your records), and the charming and highly-educated Newark, New Jersey
> staff
> (led by a woman named Sonia Mirada, also for your records), has been the
> worst experience I have ever had with an airline.  But that would be the
> subject of another email.
>
> Marc