Preparation and Annoyances

As we finish our packing, getting our cases down to 20Kg (we are so grateful for our electronic scale…) we realise all the things we still have to do! Oh Hell! No time left, or perhaps just enough to arrange…

There is so much coming up in the next two weeks, fun, work and self-development…

This all came about because a friend of ours, Deb Battersby, announced a three day certification course for an amazing process dealing with Emotional Re-alignment, called emMatrix. You will hear more about this when we are there. The course is in Chicago, the dates fit our diary, just as long as we abandoned our arranged flight home!

In researching how to get there economically we decide to go via Los Angeles, where we can meet up with our friends Connie and Alexander to talk face to face about a business deal. So we will stay with them for a couple of days and while there also go and see Graham’s nephew and his family, Nick and Claudia and boys.

We will do the seminar in Chicago and pop into the office of the IALD (International Association of Lighting Designers) to see Marsha, Jen, Renee et al, friends of Graham’s from his time as President of the Association.

A request came through for Graham to visit an historic church in Adare, County Limerick, Ireland. This is one of his lighting design projects that is moving through detailed design to contract. It fits our diary so we decide to stop off there on our way back to London. A couple of days in the beautiful west of Ireland, something new for Cheta, as are the extended visits to LA and Chicago.

We finish back in London where we drive up to Derby to spend Easter weekend with Graham’s Aunt Nan and cousin Sheena. This is the fixed point we had to work to. Easter with the family is important to Graham, one of those anchors that are important in life. This is the end of OZ2UK although our travels continue on to Holland, Germany and Spain before going off to Las Vegas for a speaking engagement for Graham. And so it continues throughout the year, but more on that in future posts…

To achieve all this we need to book our flights, hotels and cars in advance. On other trips we would leave things more to chance. We divide the tasks between us; Graham concentrating on flights, Cheta on getting suitable accommodation and cars; suitable for this trip meaning: a standard room, with easy access to public transport (Brisbane/Chicago) and last but not least: Wifi access (preferably free, as we are going to need it a lot on this journey!)

So off Cheta goes, typing “last minute accommodation” + the city in the search engines…

Once again I am sitting here shaking my head in disbelief at how much time it takes. Not because I can’t find what I want, that’s easy. No. It is mostly due to the poor programming of most travel websites.

Here is my personal ‘Five Annoyances with Travel Sites”. Judging from the sounds coming from the other side of the table, Graham agrees with me! (Graham: “…and more…”) As a frequent traveller, do you recognize some of these?

1. Memory Loss

The site keeps coming back to the homepage and doesn’t keep the dates for the next search, going back to the current date instead. Or the search dates change to completely different dates (that’s how I ended up with a booking for 3 totally different nights recently)

2. Big Brother

The site won’t let me buy flight or hotel without creating an account. I am mostly a one-time visitor and have to enter all this useless “obligatory” information before I can continue. It keeps coming back with “error!! we were unable to create your account” because the format of the zip code doesn’t match, or spaces in the phone number aren’t allowed, or some unimportant bit is missing in some obscure pull-down menu, like “please choose your faxnumber” or “you must enter a county”. I already know that by the time I get back to this website, my account will have expired anyway…

3. You have to Hurry Up, We Don’t

You have 10 minutes to finalize your booking, leaving you a very short time window to check if you actually can get into the airport by the time this flight leaves. Or the page is frozen when you come back from a bathroom break. If you make a mistake under pressure, you can’t change a booking for about 3 days, because it is “IN THE COMPUTER”, and you usually have to pay a fee (to do all the work yourself again).

4. Got Ya!

After you have gone through all the different windows, have filled out your details over and over, have clicked on “no, I don’t want to buy”, “no I don’t want to upgrade”, “no I don’t want to pay another $ 50 to pick my seat”, “yes I have read T&C”, and you have finally made it to the payment page, you are quoted a different price, due to the appearance of taxes, booking fees, unsolicited insurance, baggage allowances, and the most wide spread rip off ever: an extra credit card fee. You can’t book a flight or hotel without one, even when you phone. It is just ridiculous: every booking – whether it is a flight, hotel, concert, even a change fee, everyone around the world pays yet another $5… When you book a lot of flights and hotels, it adds up considerably, trust me! If you happen to doubt one of your entries, going back to a previous page usually resolves in losing all your data as pointed out under point 2. Or the site freezes as in 3. Back to the drawing board…..

When we have finally got it all just right, we have checked the dates, the times, the account is created, we know it is the right price, then last but not least our global world shows that it isn’t as global as it pretends to be, because…

5. Global my ****!

The site doesn’t accept payment from this particular foreign credit card, it doesn’t allows payment from a Dutch card when I have a London address, or it won’t let me specify my name-on-the-credit card, which is different than the one I use. So payment falters (deep sigh…)

Now, you may think, “That’s not such a big deal, is it?” Well, it is actually. Here’s why: this trip is 5 flights, 6 hotels and 2 cars long, for which we know we will

1. have to give in all the dates at least a couple of times,
2 have to probably redo all our account data,
3. have to keep an eye on the time window,
4. have to siff through ALL the extra charges at least twice, and
5. have to keep our fingers crossed the card will be accepted first time round.…

Our global world still has a long, long way to travel before it can match up with us Earth Pilgrims….

(…deep breath…) OK here goes….!

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