The THRILL of Booking Online

Nowadays a lot of things can be purchased online; such as air tickets, books, CDs, DVDs. We have more options now if we purchase tickets online. Rather than going from Brunei directly to the destination, we can tailor make our journey. For example, we can buy an AirAsia ticket from Brunei to KL; then buy another cheaper ticket from KL to wherever we want. No more restrictions by buying from airlines that fly from Brunei.

However, there is always the thrill of buying online. It happened to me just a while ago.

I was buying a ticket from Dubai to Paris, then Munich back to Dubai with Qatar Airways (QR). It is because Qatar Airways is one of the cheapeset for these routes, and I can collect my frequent flyer points of United Airlines.

After going through the whole process and keyed in my credit card details, it was a THRILL to see the screen showing "Processing".... Anything could happen during this time, such as internet down, webpage inaccessible or power down. If this happens, what are we going to do? Easy, just call the airlines or the bank to ask if the payment is through.

So everything went smoothly and a booking reference was given. Oh yes, the fun thing about purchasing ticket online is that we can view and select seats. So I was taking my time selecting and unselecting the seats. When I was sooooooo satisfied about my seat selection, I pressed the confirm icon....Voila! or nooooooope..."Webpage unavailable"!!! So what was I gonna do? I didnt copy down the booking reference and there is no email from QR. Has my payment gone through? I haven't got any clue.

So, I did what I thought was wise. I called the QR office in Dubai as I will be flying from Dubai. The phone instruction was in Arabic - no clue at all. Then I called the London office, thinking that would certainly be in English. They have changed the number. Called the new number and it was an answering machine, asking me to leave a message. So, I had no choice but to call the QR office in Doha. Good, the lady spoke English but the phone connection was so bad that I could hardly hear her. She told me that my name was in the booking. What a relief! As soon as I hung up the phone, I received 3 (not one, but three) emails from QR about my detailed booking...WTF!

Anyway, I will still have to call them up for seat request. It is best to select the seat far in advance especially on longhaul flight. I think I will either call the office in Singapore or KL. At least they speak 'our' language there.

The moral of this story - Wait for at least an hour for the email confirmation to arrive. If it does not, call the nearest office.

Oh, about my booking with the Luxemburg hostel. The payment didnt get through. That is another LONG story.