“I want to share my experience to prevent other families from going through the same ordeal.”

Photo by PoPville flickr user Sanjay Suchak

“Dear PoPville,

I wanted to pass along the details of a very unfortunate incident that happened to our family over the holidays. We reserved and pre-paid for a Super Shuttle direct ride from BWI to NW DC. We made the reservation two weeks in advance because we were coming back right after New Year’s and were going to land close to midnight so we wanted to make sure that we had a ride home.

We land at BWI at 11 pm, while waiting for our bags we called Super Shuttle and were told that there were two vans waiting and one was for us. We made our way to the meeting point in the Departure Terminal and got there at 11:10 pm to see only one Super Shuttle van full of passengers. We ran to ask the driver where the other van was and he referred us to the Dispatcher on site, she was hiding sitting on the floor next to the door. We asked her about our van and told her that we had a pre-paid direct ride, she stopped texting, looked up and told us “Sorry your ride was cancelled, call the 800 number to get a refund”.

We were beyond surprised because 10 minutes before she told us that our van was waiting for us. She could not care less and kept repeating to call the 800 number to get a refund. We were stranded at the airport with small children at midnight with frigid temperatures. We took a taxi home and will never again use Super Shuttle. Calls to the 800 number were not answered and we filed a generic claim as instructed in the pre-recorded message. It has been 10 days and we still have not gotten our money back. I googled if this was a common occurrence and saw that other families in the DC metro area had the same experience where they had a pre-paid direct ride home that got cancelled on the spot by a dispatcher at the airport. I want to share my experience to prevent other families from going through the same ordeal.”