random thoughts – Day 1,129 – (Thursday) – technology

Technology was supposed to make things faster and easier. Someone please tell the airline websites. A task that should have taken a few minutes has expanded to become a real headache. 

Two full hours of the night have been spent trying to book a flight. I already had the flight info from the rest of the travel group and there was no need to deal with checking and choosing. There was the signing in and lookup of the existing mileage account which was straightforward. The flights were chosen, the seats were chosen, the checked bags were chosen.

The other airlines with mileage accounts were checked for quick rate comparisons and schedules because due diligence can bring piece of mind. That caused a time-out situation in the first airline, and the schedules weren't better on the other sites and there were no nonstop flights. The person who did the initial research did a great job.

Logged back into airline site number one (Jet Blue), the choosing began again, and things were moving along until the payment screen. After entering all the payment info, there was an error message about the traveler profile not loading. That bounced me back to the step of choosing seats. 

Seats were chose (again), checked bags were chosen (again). The screen timed out. The third time would be the charm, right? Nope. The whole thing timed out again, but this time was an attempt at being light hearted and amusing and cute with an “aw, snap” screen. 

It didn’t work. I am not amused. And I am still not booked on the frigging flights. Errrrrr. Grumble, grumble, swear words. This is time I will never get back. 

Right now, I really miss the olden days of calling a travel agent. They did all the work, I could carry on with my own activities, and I just had to read off some credit card digits.