Source: currently in that situation.

Plane tickets are non-refundable or changeable (unless you pay a huge premium for them). Hotels act like this is the first time they are interacting with foreigners and do not accept payment outside of their very specific local methods (like bank transfers, literally the simplest shit ever, but they only accept local banks).

I made an honest mistake booking some plane tickets on the wrong date, and I cannot change the dates now. Nope. Not even gonna look at the one button we need to click to update the database. Thanks for the money sucker please fly with us again.

We’re in a global pandemic, have been for 2 years, and the first thing hotels and airlines did was make sure to say that catching covid was not a valid reason for getting refunds.

This should literally be considered extortion. I gave ample time to both the airlines and hotels when cancelling (guess who caught covid 🙄) so they could sell the room or plane ticket to someone else, but it’s even more insidious. If you tell them you won’t show up they get to sell the room again and keep your money.

Why isn’t it extortion? Well, you can probably guess. Airlines lobby very hard to keep their service as shitty as possible. I didn’t live through the 70s but see how much better airlines were in those times: ample space, premium service. Prices were actually not that different from today (today you also pay a lot of airport taxes, the plane ticket itself is actually really cheap if you get a breakdown of the receipt).

So just to spite them, you are better off being no-show. Then they can’t double-dip, the fuckers.

But the worst was probably my own local rail company (somewhat publicly owned, as all train companies are now under neoliberalism) telling me I cannot get my tickets refunded even with covid. They are essentially saying Yes. Yes you should travel on the train with covid and infect everyone else – no more mask mandates or imposed quarantines here btw. So they don’t consider covid to prevent you from getting on that train.

And it’s not like this company is going bankrupt and they need to watch every cent. Far from it; service is getting both worse and more expensive year after year. Just so the private investors can buff up their portfolio and see dividends.

Thankfully I have travel insurance that I didn’t even know about, and they might be able to take care of refunding me the cancellations. They didn’t get back to me yet. But for the plane ticket I booked on the wrong date, I’m on my own apparently.

This is where capitalism gets us. Always chasing money, no matter the cost. If you could get money from squeezing people, literally squeezing them like you’re making the hardest snowball ever, they would do it to you without thinking twice.

  • loathesome dongeater
    23•2 years ago

    I personally loathed capitalism more when I had to go see a doctor in a “reputable” private hospital. This is hospital is part of a chain as well, so the corporation that owns it has hospitals all over the country.

    Had to see the doctor after my back pain would not go away months after a deadlift gone wrong. Old bastards studied in Leeds, UK. From the first moment it was clear he did not give a fuck. Did not even ask which exercise I was doing when the injury happened which, while I am not a doctor, sounds like important information. Asked me get an x-ray done. Inconclusive. Then asked me get physiotherapy done for a week. Pain still did not go away. Then asked me to get an MRI done. Concluded the pain was because of a spasm in the lower back. Did not go see him after that because I felt if I ever saw him again the urge to beat the crap out of him might be too hard to resist.

    My parents are dentists and oral surgeons and half the cases they get are patients who went to greedy and shitty doctors and got some needless or in some cases harmful procedure done to them.

    The only way for me to get reliable health care is to go to a doctor that my parents know or are acquainted to.

    Thank you free market.

    • seahorse [Ohio]
      12•2 years ago

      My partner has chronic pain and she has to go through a bunch of various treatments to find out what might work instead of just immediately getting something like an MRI to see what’s wrong because insurance won’t pay for the MRI until she proves she “needs” one. Each treatment is like a month apart, so she has to deal with pain for X amount of time until one of the treatments works.

      • loathesome dongeater
        11•2 years ago

        That’s so unnecessarily cruel. Can’t a doctor say something like an MRI scan is needed?

          • Redpandalovely
            8•2 years ago

            It’s unfortunately how insurance works. We will pay for a (less expensive) x-ray and physical therapy. If that doesn’t help we will pay for an MRI. The injections are spaced apart, even though they are in different locations. They wait to see if the injection will help, but if it doesn’t I still have to wait. I was told it was about injecting with a corticosteroid too often, but really it’s about insurance because the injection is localized, not systemic. Only some of the steroid leaves the joint area. In the meantime I have Tylenol and a muscle relaxer. They don’t help much at all.

    • @FuckBigTech347
      8•2 years ago

      Some very similar shit happened to me a few years ago. Also a supposedly “reputable” hospital. After the “diagnosis” I was told to sit in a waiting room to get an MRI. Sat there on some cheap uncomfortable chair for probably an hour or more (the waiting room was completely empty the whole time btw.) and eventually I just had enough of the BS and went home. This same hospital botched a surgery on a family member of mine.

      Or that other time a therapist kept making as many pointless appointments as possible. And when I eventually questioned them they basically admitted that they cared more about the money (“you want something from me, I want something from you”)

      At this point I don’t think I can ever trust any doctor in a capitalist society ever again.

      • loathesome dongeater
        4•2 years ago

        There is still some pain. This is after a year. But I’ve been able to start working out again. I’ll see a doctor again in August when I visit my parents.

        Thanks for asking.