Prime Time is the MOST DISHONEST company in the airport shuttle business!.
On December 17, we made on-line pre-paid reservations for two passengers to bring us home from Long Beach after a December 30 flight from Boston. Unfortunately, that night Long Beach was fogged in, and our flight was diverted to Burbank. As soon as we landed, I called Prime Time to tell them that we would be late, but we would be there for our ride home as soon as the bus (chartered by Jet Blue) arrived in Long Beach. The (very disinterested) Prime Time dispatcher told me that the driver would not wait for us or the other shared-ride passengers on his van, that they would provide no other driver, and that we would be stranded in Long Beach (40 miles from our house) with no way to get home. Of course I was disappointed, and asked for a refund of the money I had already paid for this transportation. The agent, by now quite rude, told me that I would have to take up the matter with customer Service during normal weekday business hours.
As soon as possible, I called Prime Time Customer Service, to
1. complain that they had abandoned me at the airport even though
I had given them prompt notice of my arrival delay;
2. ask for a simple apology; and
3. request a refund of the service, for which I had paid,
that they did not deliver.
Instead what I got was another arrogant, unsympathetic agent who told me that there was no way I would get a refund, that I had not given them sufficient advance notice of my delay (a little hard to do from an airplane circling a closed airport while waiting to be diverted!), and that my money now belonged to Prime Time, however ill-gotten. I was referred to some apparent small print in their on-line reservation system (not included in the printed Reservation Confirmation) that apparently allows them to steal money from their customers!
Needless to say, I believe that this is dishonest, unethical, and probably illegal. Prime Time should be punished for this behavior, and WE WILL CERTAINLY NEVER AGAIN USE THEIR SERVICES.
One wonders who at Prime Time gets to keep my money, since the driver went home without any passengers to transport. Does the company share the illicit gains with the driver, who was too impatient to wait for his five passengers, or does it all go into the corporate trough?
more