Holiday Highs and Lows | Navigating the Rollercoaster of Seasonal Travel

Picture this: we were all set for a cozy Christmas vacation: last September booked our flight tickets on trip.com and everything seemed fine until the day before our trip.

At 1:03 PM on a Friday, our holiday plans got messed up with a text from KLM saying our flight was canceled. Panic mode: ON. It’s December 22nd, and we’re thinking, “Uh-oh, time’s running out!”

So, I called up KLM hoping for some help. They were nice but pointed me back to trip.com, sending me into a (it turned out) confusing loop.

Trip.com suggested a Sunday morning flight as a fix. I thought, “Sure, why not? Just one more day.” They promised an email confirmation in three hours. I even cracked a joke about their typing speed, but no one laughed.

Three nail-biting hours later, bam! Email arrives, and guess what? Rejected. Back to square one. Called trip.com again. A Flemish-accented lady apologized a bunch and said she’d try again for that Sunday morning flight. Another three-hour wait for confirmation. You can guess what happened—it got canceled again. Cue the frustrating phone tree.

Now, they suggested a flight to Paris with a tight connection to Belgrade. Confirmation email arrives, but it’s a disaster: landing in Paris at 9:45 PM and a flight to Belgrade at 10:00 PM. Impossible! Thankfully, someone noticed and fixed it, canceling the whole Air France combo.

After talking to a bunch of people, dialing through options, and dealing with language hurdles, we were drained. Decided to give KLM another shot. Surprisingly, a lovely lady there managed to get us on a Sunday night Air Serbia flight, even emailed confirmation while we were on the line. I noticed that the extra luggage fees I paid to trip.com were not reflected in my airline reservation. A representative suggested that I pay the luggage fees directly to the airline and then request reimbursement from KLM after my return flight.

Holiday turned out awesome, but when I got back, I had to deal with paying for our bags twice. Air France KLM’s response? “You had to pay an excess baggage charge.”

Seriously? Now, I’m stuck wondering: Should I let it go or keep fighting for what’s right?

Holiday tales, huh? They’re never as simple as they seem.