Days of frustration

So today was to be the big day, the day where I book my flight out of Pittsburgh for vacation next summer.  This may come off as a little premature to some but I like to have things squared away in advance, plus I am booking around a specific event, so I expect a potential traffic increase on bookings closer to the event.  So a combination of time (I have worked 28 straight overnight shifts without a day off to this point) and available funds (my paycheck finally cleared the bank after they dat on it for like 4 days) meant today was going to be the day.  It was until it wasn’t.

I get home from work, get settled in with a bowl of shredded mini wheats and hop on ye olde laptop to get about the business of booking.  I opt to use Expedia, through the Swagbucks website, so I can do a little double dipping, get vacation and additional swagbucks for my account.  So i find what appears to be the appropriate link and go through filling out the necessary fields on to get a your booking has failed message, try again in a couple of minutes.  So I wait and while I am waiting I get logged out somehow, i hop back on and I have to refill out everything, hit the confirm button and again nothing.  I noticed that while filling out everything the defaults were Canada, which is where I am going, not where I am from.  So i look to the browser bar and swagbucks had connected me to Expedia.ca as opposed to .com.  Figure no harm no foul, none of the bookings were confirmed so I would just go back to the correct Expedia site and start again.

With the correct Expedia site in the address bar I again attempt my booking, which is cheaper now as it is in US dollars versus Canadian ones, fill out everything I saw and confirm.  Turns out I missed something, whether I want trip insurance which allows me to cancel with no penalty.  Don’t want that, drag my corpse there if you have to but I am going, so I click no and confirm.  Again I get the failed booking message, try again in two minutes.  So I wait, try again, same result.  Wash rinse repeat on the bullshit too many times to count until I get a message saying there is something wrong with my account.  Turns out they were charging my card each time I tried to book while not making an actual booking.  So now I call them to find out what is going on.  After dead ending through one of their bullshit automated menus, I call a second time and ask why my account is being charged for multiple bookings that never confirmed, as my account was now reading $-788.45.  I was told that those are pending charged, they will disappear in a couple of days.  That sent off my inner rage monster, I ask how that fucking helps me today, as I cant use my card for anything now.  I was told I could make the booking today with a different card.  My reply was why would I do that when you have already made one card useless for the foreseeable future.

Not trusting Expedia at this point, I contacted my bank, not expecting miracles after my deposit fiasco a year ago where the ATM erred on a deposit by $11 and it took better than three months of fighting to get my money back, but any port in a financial storm.  While the conversation was somewhat helpful, though again no immediate resolution to my problem, they tried to hock another service on me at the same time.  Sorry, I am still pissed that i can’t cash my paycheck without having the money to cover it, there is no way in hell I am giving you more money that you will deny me access to.  Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, fuck you or something like that.