musings

Why Do American Flights Attendants Expect Everyone to Speak English?

To begin, a joke: What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual. What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? American. On my flights to and from Shanghai, I had the same crew. They were perfectly adequate, but I was a little…

|

Thoughts from My Last Round of Credit Card Applications

Here are a hodgepodge of thoughts about my last round of credit card applications. 1) It seems that most of the telephone numbers listed on blogs for Bank of America’s credit card reconsideration line have all been disconnected. Both 866-458-8805 and 888-503-6090 connected me to messages saying that the lines had been disconnected. The line…

|

Fun Facts from the Chase Sapphire Preferred Guide to Benefits

I wrote previously about the newly enhanced benefits of the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, but I thought I’d today share some of the more interesting tidbits from the Guide to Benefits. 1. Trip cancellation insurance applies if a terrorist action or hijacking cancels your trip, but not if your trip is cancelled due to declared…

|

Potential Experiment: Priming Phone Agents with Nonstandard Spelling Alphabets?

When calling airlines to make or change award bookings, you usually need to tell a phone agent a confirmation number. And it’s often necessary to use some sort of spelling alphabet (e.g. “A” as in “alpha”) to communicate the letters of the confirmation number to the phone agent as it’s very easy to confuse letters…