To by Online Or Or Not to Buy

Most of you know I am in the business of helping people have great vacations. I think what I like about it most is the satisfaction of having someone allow me to help them arrange their cruise or land vacation and then when they get back home hear them go on and on about how great a vacation they had. Believe it or not most of us in this business see ourselves not as agents but as facilitators. That is, my job one is to help make your dream vacation come true. However, if your going to have the benefit of our experience and expertise you are going to have to ask. And with that, I'll get to my point.

Have you ever hear the expression, "The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray." Well that has never been truer in any industry than it is in the travel industry. With all the online booking companies it is even truer today than ever before. Rest assured, if anything can go wrong it will and will go wrong in spades.

For most of you your annual vacation is the single largest financial investment you will make aside from your home and your car. Even a "cheap" 4 day cruise for a family of four can cost you as much as $1,300.00. And that just gets the four of you on the ship. Nor small investment for what amounts to a long weekend.

As I see it you have a couple of choices when making you vacation plans. You can take advantage of the experience and expertise of someone like me or you can do it yourself. Now I can tell you that doing it yourself WILL NOT save you any money or time. It may give you the satisfaction of saying, "I did all by myself." I can't say using someone like me to help you will save you any money I do know it will not cost you any more than if you did it yourself.

Like I said, it's your investment and you have a choice on how you will make it. Just remember the Biblical axiom, "There is safety in many counselors." Now, I could use this space and list all the happy clients we have but you'd probably just yawn. So, I want to simply recount one sad story that came to my attention just yesterday.

Yesterday evening about 3:30 p.m. my office phone rang and on the other end of the line was a young woman who quickly asked, "Can you define an "unforeseen circumstance." I immediately asked her her name and what prompted her to call. Here is her story: Seems she had gone online to an online travel service (this one just happened to be Priceline) where she searched, found and paid for her family's vacation. She even had the foresight to buy the trip insurance that Priceline offered. She then set about preparing for her vacation confident that she had done everything just right. Not bad and not that different from what everyone else who uses these online booking companies would do.

Then it happened. Something came up that she had to cancel the trip. She called the customer service number she had been given and was told they would not refund her payment and gave her an 800 number to the Berkley Group their insurance provider. She was then told, "You'll have to call them, get some papers filled out and file a claim." All of which she did. Their response, " We only refund for 'unforeseen' circumstances."

Now she wanted to know, "what is an unforeseen circumstance?" I explained it to her and she seemed confused and said, "That's what I thought." After a few moments more conversation she then sheepishly said, "You don't think I'm going to get my money do you?" To which I answered, "I don't know but it doesn't look good." Then I said, "If you get your money back that will be great but even if you don't you have learned a valuable lesson." She asked, "A what is that?" To which I replied, "You have learned that when you book your vacation online and something goes wrong you are pretty much on your own."

Folks you can book many kinds of travel online but when things go wrong you are on your own. It rarely cost you more to use a travel consultant or Agent and you have someone in your corner to help.

Father's Day 2011

Back in July 1992 Reba McEntire released a song entitle, "The Greatest Man I Never Knew." It was about a daughter lamenting the fact that though her father "lived just down the hall" she never really got to know him. I've always thought that was perhaps the saddest thing a daughter could say about her father. I certainly hope that song isn't a commentary on my own daughters and their relationship with their father.

What I do know is that the greatest man I have ever known lived just down the hall and that man was my father. I am thinking of him today because this year is a unique year for me as far as Father's Day is concerned. Father's Day falls on June 19 this year and it was 28 years ago to the day (Father's Day 1983) that my dad died. I remember someone saying to me, "How sad that you loose your father on Father's Day." Indeed, I'd be lying if I said that it was not a sad day for me. Indeed it was. It was because on that day, Father's Day June 19, 1983 the greatest man I ever knew was gone.

However, I have never thought I lost him on that day. As Vance Havner once said about his recently deceased wife, "She's not lost, I know right where she is." Truth is, my father is gone but he is not lost. I know where he is. As I told several people back then, "For the first time since his father passed my dad is spending Father's Day in the presence of both his Heavenly Father and his own father. Who am I to begrudge him that."

Beyond that, he is not lost to me. From my youngest years I spent time with my dad. While he worked I would use a "creeper" as a kinda "skateboard" before skateboards were invented. I spent literally hundreds if not thousands of hours with him working in his auto repair shop after school. This continued until I finished high school and college. The most important thing I received from all that time with him (both in the home and the outside world) was the opportunity to watch and listen to him as he related to the challenges and people in his world.

My dad never said too much. He spoke with brevity and clarity. You really had to work hard to misunderstand him. He always spoke positively. I never heard him say anything critical of anyone and that included those people who did not always have his best interest at heart. I cherish a treasure trove of wisdom that I heard come from his lips as he spoke. He never pontificated but had a wonderful knack for sharing words of wisdom in a "back door" sort of way.

He was a man who could keep a confidence. Telling him something in confidence was like casting your fears, burdens and cares into a black hole. They just never resurfaced anywhere to anyone. I now understand why he was the confidant to so many and especially to the pastors of our area. He, a Baptist, was confidant to a couple of local parish priest when we lived in Vinton, Louisiana and later in Pasadena, Texas to at least three Baptist pastors. Being a pastor I know how paranoid we cleric types can be. It rare for pastors and priests to find a person in whom we can confide without fear of having what we share resurface and wound us. I believe this was my father's ministry.

I could go on and on about his virtues and even say a few words about his flaws and he did have his flaws. He would have loved Billy Cunningham's song in which he says, "God is great, beer is good and people are crazy." Dad would have agreed.

You see it isn't so much his perfection as how he lived in light of his imperfections. He never was very successful in business (and that's putting it mildly). He never thought of himself as a good father. In fact, on his death bed he apologized for not being a good father (I told him that was news to me because I saw him as a terrific dad). He spoke of my mom's staying with him through all the years of their marriage as quite an accomplishment on her part and perhaps it was - at least from his point of view. He like all of was a flawed man or as we in the religious world might say, "a man with feet of clay."

But in spite of the real and perceived flaws he was a great dad. He was honest; he was fair; he was loyal; he was trustworthy; he worked hard and loved his work; he was generous; and he was consistent. He was the same in public as he was in private. He honored his father and his mother and he loved his wife and he loved his children. What more could a young man need in a father.

I remember when we had gathered at the National Cemetery in Houston for his graveside service that the pastor, Estol Williams, a friend of both my dad and myself surprised me by asking me to close the graveside service with a prayer. I remember that prayer as though it were done just today, "Father I thank you for a dad who through living his life showed us how to live and in his death taught us how to die." That just about says it all.

So on this Father's Day, June 19, 2011, the 28th anniversary of my Dad's death I say again the my Heavenly Father, "Father I thank you for a dad who through living his life showed us how to live and in his death taught us how to die."