David C.

You book your flights four months in advance from a European capital to a Latin American capital through the Pod People, and pay by credit card.

A week later you get an email telling you that some of your flights have been changed. The timings are OK.

A week later you get another email telling you that some of your flights have been changed AGAIN. The Pod People won't tell you what the changes are. They tell you that you MAY be able to learn about them if you hit a given link and provide your details. (You hit the link, and discover that the timings are impossible.) In any case the Pod People ask you to phone them as soon as possible to discuss the changes.

You ring the supplied number, and for twenty minutes you endure an assortment of hold-the-line musical inanities. You wait for a while and try again. Same story. No one answers.

You complain by email, and receive an immediate automated response which urges you to ring the same useless number that you have already tried.

You try to ring the number anyway, and are rewarded as before.

On the following day you get another email telling you that some of your flights have been changed AGAIN. Before trying to ring, you hit the supplied link, and enter your details. It doesn't recognize your surname, and won't tell you anything.

You decide to cancel, and manage to get through by phone to the cancellations department. You read out the reference number on the Pod People's most recent email, and are told that this number relates to a 'Mr Chadwick', not to anyone of your name. You read out the reference number for the Pod People's first change-of-timings email, and confirm your identity. Halfway through the cancellation process you are cut off.

Start again. You ring up once more, read out the reference number for the Pod People's first change-of-timings email, and confirm your identity.The process of cancellation takes half an hour, most of it filled with hold-the-line inanities (or actual silence when the man at the other end forgets to hit the music button).

You lose over $1200 because the fares are unrefundable. Why should you lose anything when you paid for tickets on certain flights which the Pod People chose to change?

Let me not weary readers any further with my second-person tale of horrors. If I have to travel in the future to some distant part of the world, I shall build and sail my own boat before I use the Pod People. In conclusion, a few words of advice.

NEVER, EVER, USE THE UTTERLY USELESS POD PEOPLE.