Triangle Trip

The Westin snack and minibar sensors are way too sensitive. I was recently at Westin and accidentally knocked over a can of peanuts on the snack tray. I picked up and placed the peanuts back on the tray but apparently did not do it fast enough. The next day I noticed charges for peanuts and cookies on my hotel bill – apparently I also knocked the cookies off its place on the sensored tray.

I had to talk to the front desk to  straighten out my bill before I left the hotel. Due to the long line, I  wasted 15 minutes of my valuable time – luckily I didn’t have an urgent meeting or catch a flight. The front desk agent was very nice and removed the charges without question. However, this inconvenience gave me the feeling of Westin trying to tack on extra charges to my bill. Had I not reviewed the bill before leaving the hotel, I would have been charged $20 for the peanuts and cookies.

Westin could have prevented this inconvenience had they done the following:

1.  Had the front desk warn me about the minibar and snack sensors. The front desk should have to told me I had x seconds to put the snack or drink back or I will be charged for removing the item off its place. What if I only want to see the packaging or read the ingredients?

2.  Have a very large sign on top of the snacks and on the minibar door clearly stating that their is a sensor tied to the drinks and snacks. The tray holding the snacks had a sign on the edge of the tray which was way below eye level. The sign on the door was so small I couldn’t even read it with a magnified glass.

Virgin America is flying from point to point as opposed to using a hub and spoke model like the larger US carriers. The point to point flights work well on regional hops but don’t think they work as well on coast to coast flights. The coast to coast flights cost too much to operate when you have planes that are 1/4 full.

Virgin America flies from NYC and Boston to Los Angeles and San Francisco. I have been going coast to coast on Delta an United for the past four months, and the coast to coast flights are rarely full. Although I haven’t been on a Virgin America flight but I can’t image they are packed or even 50% full.

United probably has the most loyal business travele customers and they can’t fill up the United P.S. flights which has less seats than Delta and other airlines due to the larger business class cabin. If you have Virgin America miles (I am not even sure how it works), I highly recommend you use them now before they go under like the Virgin retail stores. I don’t see how Richard Branson and his hedge fund partners are making money here.

If you’re a global traveler from the US and need to check emails and have Internet access when you’re abroad, get a BlackBerry if you don’t already own one. I have been abroad and used local carriers (3, Telus, Telstra, Vodafone, etc.) for voice and data then found out my weekly bill was over US$100. The reason for the high fee is due to my data usage. Most international phone companies charge data by the kilobytes or megabytes of upload/download on your device.

The frugal way to get on the Internet and check emails is to leverage the BlackBerry network. If you have a BlackBerry plan from the US, your data service such as email, browsing and BlackBerry Messenger will be traveling on the BlackBerry network. International carriers will allow BlackBerry traffic to go through free of charge (they actually charge BlackBerry but you as the consumer don’t have to worry about it).

I recommend you buy a BlackBerry and join a BlackBerry data plan which is available for T-Mobile for around $40 a month with international roaming – $20 per month for US only (for the record, I am not compensated by T-Mobile or RIM for this post). If you already own a BlackBerry from Sprint, Verizon, etc., get your carrier to enable international BlackBerry service which is around $20 more per month. For the extra $20 a month, you’ll buy the piece of mind of having Internet and email without losing your pants. I have tried this approach in Canada, France, Hong Kong, and the UK, and did not see additional charges on my bill.