2 Planning

So here is a little tale of planning, booking and unforeseen circumstances. 

One day around the end of last year (2012) my best mate Chris and I were hanging out having dinner after work one fine evening and he, scrolling away on his iPhone, said, "damn flights to London and South America are cheap, I really think I might buy one." I don't quite remember what transpired after that but one thing led to another and then we were booking flights to London through webjet.com and were vaguely planning our backpacking trip. 

    

We decided on Europe over South America, being pretty widely advised that the later is better to do on tours and having things sorted out a bit more before you go. But we wanted the free spirited party and beer, staying in hostels experience and all that jazz. And perhaps a part of my own incentive is that I would rather do South America latter when I have a little more time and liberty to go all out. So, Europe for a stunning $1800 in May/June it is.

 Or was. 

Shorty after this is was discovered that my mother would need a total knee replacement, on both knees! This surgery is equatable to a heart transplant in terms of recovery and pain levels. And so there was a problem as my travel plans would have me out of the country just dangerously inside the recovery time in which she would need quite a bit of care. And so with great pain it was decided that I would need to delay my plans, and would have to break the news to Chris and figure out if he would be okay to go it alone. Turns out he was understanding and actually ended up changing his plans and restricting himself to the UK alone (I've been there, he has not).

So, time to change my flights. The first option, travel insurance. Unfortunately, when I looked into it my mothers initial referral to a surgeon about her bad knees was given a mere two days before I booked my insurance. Now at the time she was intending on seeing a surgeon about having silicone injected into her knees and had no clue a total, double replacement was in order. But, rules be rules and when it came down to it travel insurance was not an option. 

So, option two: cancel and rebook with a voucher from webjet. So requests for deferment were made and searches for new flights began. Now it was a given that the the stunning sale period would be over and I would have to shell out for more expensive flights as well as a transference fee, fine. 

Suddenly though, it was revealed that my flights would have to be booked for a date prior to November or the voucher would expire. Okay, so a quick scurry to survey the dates and some were found that fitted nicely between work, uni and prac teaching placement that still gave my mum an extra month of recovery with me there to cook, drive, shop and clean. So I forged ahead and put in my request for the new flight (singular now, what once paid for a return trip would now only cover a one way flight) and I booked my outbound flight on Qantas points. 

There is a side note here I want to take a moment to discuss. I have an American Express card which I try to use as much as possible, paying for petrol, groceries, coffee, shoes, clothes, lunch, anything at all that can be bought on a card gets paid for on my trusty old Amex card. I then pay the card off each month never paying interest. You have to be disciplined but it sure works. And as a result of this I have accumulated enough points to fly me to Copenhagen. Boo yah!!! Free flight, I only bought things I needed and would have bought anyway and as result got a flight.

So, all was well and ready to go. But wait.....

Webjet shits came back saying, "the flight must be outbound from Australia" Fuuuuuuuu

So back to square one. And to cut a long story short, after finally getting them to admit that they simply jack up the prices and charge more for customers using a voucher ($900 more) then customers making a new booking. I guess they do this simple because they can, knowing they have voucher holders by the short and curlies. 

I ended up calculating that the total difference in price between using my voucher for a new flight with British Airways through webjet with many stops and completely booking a new flight with Qantas was a mere and measily $120. Pfft. So being completely fed up with webjet and not wanting to lose a 5000 Qantas point to change the point booked flight I already had, I decided to say "fuck it", take the small amount of money I could get back and book a new flight with Qantas directly through them. 

So, in summary, webjet is probably fine so long as you don't need to change anything. But they were utterly ridiculous to deal with. Making it impossible to get a manager on a phone, hanging up on me when they were sick of me I suspect and generally being dicks. 

And thus it is sorted I am flying there with Emirates (paid for on Qantas points) and flying home with Qantas (bought directly in cash through them). So it has cost me a little extra, but hey, the flights were stupidly cheap to begin and I have an extra month to work and save up a bit extra. 

But hallelujah I have flights booked and I am hitting up Europe in a month. :D

Boom de Yada. Life is awesome.