Today (actually yesterday if you want to be technical about it) Vinit, me and Surabhi drove over to the Airport so that they could change their Air India flight from Friday(25th) to Today(22nd). The plan was that they would change their tickets and then we would grab dinner.
The reason they had to go to the counter was because this was a non-refundable ticket and they were told that they should come to the reservation counter at the Airport and get the tickets rescheduled for today. We thought that it would take them a few mins to do this and then we would be free.
It took them almost 1 1/2 hours. Actually it might be a bit more also… They were first told that they have to go to the reservation office in Safderjung to get it changed and Vinit very politely pointed out that the counter they were standing at had reservation written on it in Big blue letters. So then they told them that the flight cost was Rs. 5000 and not Rs 3,000 something that they had checked and which was what their original tickets had costed. So they used my Phone to go online and show them the price for a ticket on their own website.
Still they wouldn’t believe them and continued to argue with them. While this was going on I was sitting in the car waiting because we hadn’t put the car in parking thinking that it wouldn’t take long. Finally the cops asked me to move the car because I had been standing there for half an hour. When I told them I was waiting for someone, they asked me to move to a different corner of the airport and I waited there for another 1/2 hour. Finally the cops asked me to move along. So I got a phone from Vinit and drove off to wait.
Because Vinit and Surabhi had my phone I didn’t have anything to read or do. Luckily, a little while later I found a Dr Who book that Surabhi had left in the car so I had something to read. By the time the call from them came to pick them up I was almost half way through the book.
Funny thing is that they still couldn’t convince them to move the tickets to the new date because apparently the Internet sales department is completely isolated from the rest of the departments and they couldn’t see the lower price on their systems. Finally they (Vinit and Surabhi) ended up buying the tickets online using my Phone. (Yay me) On a side note: Opera Mini is the best browser for the mobile phones. I use it on my N95 and they had absolutely no problems buying tickets even with all the redirects/javascripts etc on the site.
They are going to go yell at the reservation department again today with their tickets and ask for a refund. Good luck to them.
Me.. I am waiting for them to get up so that I can drop them off to the airport and will then go to sleep.
Well, this is all for now. Will post more later.
– Suramya