Blame airCanada
Nov. 20th, 2007 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cdaveGrr! I've just spent about an hour and half trying to book tickets to Canada.
I was thinking about visiting some friends out there and was told today that aircanada.com had a sale on that finished today.
I visited aircanada.com, entered the flight details and got a price. I thought I should compare it, so looked a couple of other flight sites. By the time I'd come back my session had expired.
So I went back to the start and saw the section on air miles. I haven't flown transatlantic recently so I looked into that and decided I should probably get a bmi card, rather than aircanada's own one. Of course this meant the site timed out.
Back to the beginning again. And this time, when prompted, I tried to create an account on the site to save all my information, so I wouldn't have to enter it again. It wouldn't accept a UK mobile as the contact number, and I have no landline at the moment. Meanwhile, timeout.
Restarting again, I got as far as the payment section, and found that they have implimented "Visa Secure services" which means that the only way to pay is to agree to the terms and conditions of this market^h^h^h^h^h^h security exercise. I read them, clicked acknowledge, and Visa returned me to an aircanada timeout screen.
Round and round the Mulberry bush. After restarting and entering my credit card details again, and passing Visa's Security, I get taken back to aircanada page telling me that they cannot accept payment as the price has changed. It looked the same to me so I asked for assistance on the site, and some called me straight away (I'm glad the time diff is minus 5 hours). He said that the prices are all dynamic and are updated if someone else books a seat on the same flight as you. I pointed out that what with the sale the price hadn't changed. He told me to just enter my card details again, but I had been timed out.
At this point I took a brief break from aircanada. As, after entering my card details so many times I realised my card was about to expire, and I didn't have the replacement yet, so I called my card issuer. It seems they still have my old address and daft me hadn't noticed the statements not arriving (I pay the full amount by DD, and only use it rarely anyway). So I asked them cancel the card they'd sent to my old address, and send me another new one to my new address.
Back to aircanada, enter flight details, payment details. Card declined. Sigh
Back on the phone to the card issuer. It turns out that the last person I'd spoke to had changed my address on the system, cancelled my current card, and left the card sent to my old address active. Grr! They can't reactivate cards, and aircanada don't take debit cards. I couldn't reach my parents, so started begging round the people who'd stayed late at the office, offering to pay cash tomorrow. One very nice guy agreed to pay with his card.
Time to fill in the aircanada site details again, this time with his card. However he got the Mastercard secure verification screen pop up. He failed. He thought he'd used the wrong phone number first, but it wasn't that. Then he spotted that the post code field wasn't long enough to cope with London post codes, and had missed the last letter. So he deleted the space, didn't change the phone number back and failed for the third time. Which blocks you from using your card online.
He kindly filled in the details again with another card, while on the phone trying to unblock his first card via the 0844 number provided (they couldn't, he may never be able to use that one online), and it went through!
So I make the 8 times filling in flight information, 5 credit card number entries, and 4 phone calls. Hasn't the internet made our life so much easier?
I was thinking about visiting some friends out there and was told today that aircanada.com had a sale on that finished today.
I visited aircanada.com, entered the flight details and got a price. I thought I should compare it, so looked a couple of other flight sites. By the time I'd come back my session had expired.
So I went back to the start and saw the section on air miles. I haven't flown transatlantic recently so I looked into that and decided I should probably get a bmi card, rather than aircanada's own one. Of course this meant the site timed out.
Back to the beginning again. And this time, when prompted, I tried to create an account on the site to save all my information, so I wouldn't have to enter it again. It wouldn't accept a UK mobile as the contact number, and I have no landline at the moment. Meanwhile, timeout.
Restarting again, I got as far as the payment section, and found that they have implimented "Visa Secure services" which means that the only way to pay is to agree to the terms and conditions of this market^h^h^h^h^h^h security exercise. I read them, clicked acknowledge, and Visa returned me to an aircanada timeout screen.
Round and round the Mulberry bush. After restarting and entering my credit card details again, and passing Visa's Security, I get taken back to aircanada page telling me that they cannot accept payment as the price has changed. It looked the same to me so I asked for assistance on the site, and some called me straight away (I'm glad the time diff is minus 5 hours). He said that the prices are all dynamic and are updated if someone else books a seat on the same flight as you. I pointed out that what with the sale the price hadn't changed. He told me to just enter my card details again, but I had been timed out.
At this point I took a brief break from aircanada. As, after entering my card details so many times I realised my card was about to expire, and I didn't have the replacement yet, so I called my card issuer. It seems they still have my old address and daft me hadn't noticed the statements not arriving (I pay the full amount by DD, and only use it rarely anyway). So I asked them cancel the card they'd sent to my old address, and send me another new one to my new address.
Back to aircanada, enter flight details, payment details. Card declined. Sigh
Back on the phone to the card issuer. It turns out that the last person I'd spoke to had changed my address on the system, cancelled my current card, and left the card sent to my old address active. Grr! They can't reactivate cards, and aircanada don't take debit cards. I couldn't reach my parents, so started begging round the people who'd stayed late at the office, offering to pay cash tomorrow. One very nice guy agreed to pay with his card.
Time to fill in the aircanada site details again, this time with his card. However he got the Mastercard secure verification screen pop up. He failed. He thought he'd used the wrong phone number first, but it wasn't that. Then he spotted that the post code field wasn't long enough to cope with London post codes, and had missed the last letter. So he deleted the space, didn't change the phone number back and failed for the third time. Which blocks you from using your card online.
He kindly filled in the details again with another card, while on the phone trying to unblock his first card via the 0844 number provided (they couldn't, he may never be able to use that one online), and it went through!
So I make the 8 times filling in flight information, 5 credit card number entries, and 4 phone calls. Hasn't the internet made our life so much easier?
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-21 09:26 am (UTC)I do like Paypal though as a means of general payment and try to use it as much as possible instead of cards now. Shame their fees are so high.