For the love of Shiva!!!!

After two straight hours on the phone with British Airways I have FINALLY changed my return ticket home! I called last week and was on the phone for over an hour and a half - back and forth with American Airlines and British airways because neither airline wanted to take responsibility for my return home - go figure right! So I finally had a nice block of time, during proper business hours, to park myself at Anu's Internet cafe and call BA. I've put it off the last few days b/c of lack of sufficient time, but primarily because it is downright exhausting...Thus it required a great deal of mental preparation on my part because I knew the call would take eons, knew I'd be on hold for most of the call, and I knew it probably wouldn't get resolved today. And if I were a gambler, and had I placed a wager on my predictions, I'd be a damn billionaire right now. Of the two hours I was on the phone, I was on hold a good 75% or more of the call, and while now have a new reservation to leave Bangalore on March 8th of 2009 to head back to Orlando, I must call back in 48 hours to confirm the booking and pay the change ticket fee - of course it would have been far too damn easy to take care of everything today. But hey, I am really grateful that the ticket is reserved and I'm not still scheduled to leave on August 27th.

Oh but I forgot to tell you the funny part! You see when I called a few days back AA said it was a British Airways ticket and BA said it was an AA ticket...In the end I primarily fly via AA on most of my legs, but somehow it is considered a BA ticket. Well BA could not, forever, even find me in their system...Why? Because, as I was to discover, they had purged me from their system. What the F... does that mean you ask? Well, after I flew from America to India someone somewhere out in cyber space somehow deleted my return ticket home. So when I called to change that return ticket it no longer existed...OF COURSE! My goodness why on earth would I have expected BA not to have purged me from their system - after all they have managed to lose my luggage the past two straight years in a row - so I think being purged from their system is the next mandatory step in the horribly shitty service procedure manual.

My absolute favorite though was when the customer service rep figured out that they had purged me from the system and matter of factly said my return ticket had been deleted. There was a long pause...I told her I needed this problem to be fixed so I could change the date of my return to America. She sounded a bit annoyed as she explained that my booking didn't exist any longer and she would have to 're-build' my flight...There was another long pause as if to say, "Sorry we have deleted your return ticket to America, so it is gone now Ms. Shirley - but if you would like to fly home I can help you purchase a new flight!" I calmly said, "Ok well let's rebuild my flight!" And that is when the phone cut off....This after spending an hour and a half haggling with AA and BA about who, indeed, would be helping me with the changes to my ticket; and after finding out that I had been purged from BA's system. That is when I decided fight this fight another day....Today was the day - and I'm happy to say I THINK I won ;-) well almost...