Yet another busy weekend, hence the lack of a Sunday Post.

Spent most of my morning on Saturday booking my flight to Amsterdam. Sure, you’ve seen the pics and whatnot, but this is what really happened.

I punch up ba.com to get my flight booked. Get all the legs of my journey loaded up and I’m sitting here, credit card at the ready, entering my information.

I click submit and the page returns with a nasty error message, in red even, about my credit card number not matching the card type. So, I double checked the number, the 3 digit code on the back and my name and re-submitted.

I got the same error.

I fussed with it for about 20 minutes but kept getting the same error message. I figure a call is in order.

So, I call the website help number and get a very nice woman that tried to help me. I say tried because:

1. The woman kept saying “I can help you with that”
2. Between the crappy call quality and her light accent, I could barely understand most of what she was saying

So, I worked on this with her for about 45 minutes (including hold time). When I finally realized that she couldn’t, in fact, help me, I thanked her for her time and hung up.

Tried again on the website. Still no joy.

This time I called the booking number. They do charge an extra $20 to use this service, but I was ok with that if it meant I’d get my trip booked.

This time, after a much shorter wait, I got a very helpful guy working in a Florida call center. He was able to pull up the flights I wanted from start to finish at the same price I was getting on the website. I then told him about my problems with the website.

He then informed me that ba doesn’t accept debit Mastercard for payment. From my previous call, I was under the impression that was only a problem on the website, which I told him about as well. He said it was ba in general.

Crap.

So I thanked him for his time, told him to stop apologizing because it wasn’t his fault.

But I still need the trip booked. Cheaptickets.com to the rescue.

It took some doing, but I was able to find and book all of the flights on ba from LAX to London to Amsterdam and back. I had to do it this way, eventhough there were cheaper alternatives, because I was yelled at for even thinking about using more than 1 carrier, especially for the trip back. Sage advice to be sure, and I didn’t want to risk getting lost in the airport shuffle. Big, gi-normous super duper thank you to the Queen (from My Cruise Planners) for the yellage and assist!

There is one small problem with my tickets however. I’m a big guy. Sure, I’ve lost 25lbs (go me!), but that’s not the problem. I’m fairly broad shoulder and have to turn sideways to walk through smaller door openings. Because of this, one of my least favorite places to be is in a coach seat on an airplane. I really was hoping to be able to travel in ba’s premier economy class which has seats that recline an extra couple of inches, have about 7 extra inches of leg room, plus laptop power at the seat. Hopefully, I’ll be able to upgrade at the gate.

Less than 30 days away. I might be a little excited now! If you missed it, here is the pic.

One Response to “A post without a title?”

1. Ian C. Says:
   May 22nd, 2007 at 6:00 pm

   I’ll let you know how nice the “premium economy” seats are

   Time for you to splurge on an AmEx, I think!

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