Paid for special seating but did not get them

Date: 17 March 2012
Location: St. Maarten

On March 17th I was on standby through my son-in-law John xxx. I understand when on standby you may not be able to get on a flight and this did happen. However, 4 of the seven did get on the flight only to find out later that there were 5 avaialbe seats on the flight and the remaider of three ended up purchasing tickets costing 561.00 plus rent a hotel room to leave the next day. (Missing a day of vacation).

I decided to purchase 7 tickets on our return flight from Saint Maarten instead of stand by the tickets costing $525.00 for six on one flight and the other person John Stefano ticket cost $825.00. Why the difference I certainly did not understand.

In addition, I paid for selective seating for my daughter and our 2 ½ and 6 year old granddaughters so they could sit together(59.00 each) this never happened when we got on the plane the three of them were in different seats and not together. I stayed in the isle before the plane took off waiting for seats where at least the 2 /1/2 year old and the mother could sit together.  Finally after 15 minutes and delaying the plane the flight attendant was able to convince someone to move. Why did I pay for selective seating online that was not available. Needless to say, this was a horrible experience for us  and not at all any way to treat customer on  a flight. Also, our luggage was lost and ended up in St. Maarten since we never made it on the stand-by flight and had nothing with us when we had to stay at the Marriott.

- Vicky