I'm starting to think there's in an international conspiracy to keep me from going home to see my parents. Ok, I don't think it's a conspiracy, but it's really starting to piss me off. After all of the troubles I had with Travelocity, I was determined not to use their services again, so I tried Cheaptickets.com (part of Orbitz). I made the reservations for the same flight I had reserved with Travelocity and it turned out to be about $100 cheaper ... great. I got a confirmation email, then a couple of hours later, I got an email stating my reservations had been canceled because the flight had limited seating, but not to worry, because my credit card had not been charged. This was around 1:00am China time. Called the credit card company, and it had, in fact, been charged for the cost of the reservations. Great, I've got to make another call. At 9am, I checked their website again, I was looking for ammo to use in my call, and the flight was still listed. So, I called and the poor girl who answered got an ear full.

How can a company cancel reservations based on the reason that the flight has limited seating but still offer the same seats I reserved 8 hours later? I went off, I politely explained that I was not mad at her, but I wanted to make sure that someone knew about this and that I was not happy. I also went off on the fact that my credit card was charged, not once, but twice. The girl stayed very polite throughout my entire tirade (she made some of the "customer service" reps I work with look like pit bulls) and explained that before notifying me of the cancellation, they tried to rebook the tickets for me (hence, the second charge on my credit card). Good idea, but Bank of China charges a credit card as soon as the submit button is pressed, they don't wait to see if what you're purchasing is completed or not. Now I'm going to have to wait another 3 to 10 business days for the credit to be put back on my card if I want to try another online travel company.

Thankfully, I found a local place that got me tickets on the same flight, plus tickets from Dalian to Beijing, for about $50 more than I was going to pay online. I will pay for these tickets, in cash (don't know if that's a good thing) tomorrow as long as everything checks out. Until then, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.