Librarians! Your personal travel agents

I think it's great that lots of people come to the library to use our computers. However, more and more companies are scaling back on in person & telephone customer service, and simply telling people to "go to the library and use a computer."

Many of the people come in, and ask us how to transfer money between bank accounts, book flights, buy retail...

I've helped two different people recently who came in to book flights on Northwest. The first woman was told to go to the library, because it would be cheaper online. The second woman was told she'd have to book online to get travel insurance (which isn't true- I found a toll-free number). If people were skilled Internet users, this wouldn't really be an issue. However, many are clueless when it comes to computers, but the person on the phone says "they can help you at the library." People come in expecting us to know how to navigate every Web page in existence, and many of them have no desire to learn how to do it themselves- they simply want us to do the work for them.

Sure, we can help. But it's not part of my job to sit down with you for 30 minutes, and book flights for your upcoming trip to Seattle. It's really a shame that companies have completely abandoned the concept of excellent customer service. They cut costs all over the place, but the product still costs the same.