When I woke up that morning, one of the first things on my mind was the fact that I never received the confirmation email that I was promised from the person I spoke with at Qantas who said she’d booked my return flight and also had issued a partial refund of nearly $700, or something like that.
So… I called Qantas trying to figure out what was going on, and the lady proceeded to tell me no tickets at the purchased, no refund issued, and that the person that I spoke with didn’t even have the authority to do that.
They were simply making things up.
Apparently, Qantas uses third party customer support all around the globe and doesn’t really have any of their own support people. So I am at the mercy of whatever the heck these random people in random parts of the world decide they want to tell me. That’s one reason way back in November I got different stories from every single person I spoke with about trying to cancel or change or delay flights and whatnot.
So here I was now two days later, and still no closer to having my ticket back home. Not only that, but the price had gone up something like $400, almost $500, I think.
So now after being promised by a “Qantas” representative that I had my ticket purchased and set and even a partial refund coming, I was told by another rep that none of that was done. That, in fact, Qantas couldn’t even do that. Expedia had to.
😶
Good freaking gravy.
In November, Expedia tells me that I have to talk to Qantas to change/cancel/do anything. So i talk to Qantas. After a bazillion different agents, I finally am told my flights are cancelled, and I have flight credit that will be applied when I get my ticket, and I need to call them back to apply it. I can’t do it online.
Now I’m told Qantas can’t even do it, and I have to talk to Expedia.
So I call Expedia, and instead of a credit and a partial refund, I’m being told it’s gonna be another $591, to cover the difference in the flight cost and the penalty (the difference in flight cost caused by their own incompetence delaying my ticket several days).
I give up and try to pay for the ticket difference and penalty, but the card won’t go through properly, even though I use it all the time on this trip. She tries twice, and then she hangs up on me or something. Whatever happened, she disappeared, and I had to start completely over.
The next person I worked with, who took 45 minutes just to even find all my information, guaranteed me that he’d booked my ticket, that I didn’t owe anything at all and was all set to go. He even sent an email that showed my new itinerary, but there was no record of my new itinerary on my actual account in Expedia.
(sigh)
He promised me email confirmation within 24 hours (which is now a red flag that they probably have no clue what they’re doing), and we were finally done–nearly 4 hours later.
Here’s hoping.
🤞
Gratefully, Chase has been really cool about waiting while I deal with travel nightmares. He was getting stressed out for me as he watched how ridiculous it all was. At one point, without telling me, he actually tried to just buy me a return ticket, but The price the search came up with ballooned even clicked on, saying that fare was no longer available, so he gave up as well.
Both Expedia and Qantas have been absolute nightmares to work with.
Be warned.
And it’s not just a one off. We all have bad days. This is the norm with these companies, with several inquiries to use as a testing pool.
Good freaking gravy.
So… after that, we thought we were heading to the Glacier Burn track, a hike we heard that is really beautiful, but apparently there are two of them? So Chase plugged it into Google, and Google took us a long ways out of the way before I realized where Chase’s map was taking us. I didn’t realize until we were basically in Queenstown, and I was like, wait, what?
Oops.
So now we were 3 1/2 hours away from the hike, and it was already past noon, I think. Oh, we were in Arrowtown, not Queenstown.
Not sure what’s in Arrowtown, but it looked like the prototypical tourist trap town–a billion cars crammed in, tourists everywhere along what looked like almost an “old town” section of the town.
I’m sure the town has some historical significance or something, but yuck, so many tourists out was like the 4th of July, people, people, everywhere–all over the grass, walking the road.
Love people, but little claustrophobic me just wanted out. Chase is the same, so we headed out, as soon as we used the bathroom and gotten gas.
We gave up on going to the Glacier Burn and Rob Roy tracks… for now, at least.
We drove into Queenstown, which… was a larger version of Arrowtown. 🙃
Queenstown is the party town. With a beautiful background of lovely mountains and a gorgeous lake. With that backdrop, they’ve manufactured all sorts of adventure things that you can do–huge bungee, jet boating, skydiving, paragliding, lake adventures, etc.
But, oh man, it’s crowded. It was like Arrowtown, and we literally just drove right on through. 😆
I’ve grown to love my country life and country space so much that neighborhoods, let alone cities are claustrophobic to me. My soul hungers for the wide open spaces.
After getting a little ways out of town (and like most tourist places, everyone is crowded around a small area, so it doesn’t take much effort to get beyond the masses), we stopped off at a little spot on the lake to play around with Chase’s GoPro, to see what we could see in the water.
We also watched a kite surfer set up his gear and go out. The water, which was like glass screen we first arrived, within just a few minutes started to have waves. The wind kicked up, then kicked up some more, and after not very long at all, the lake had gone from glassy to choppy, perfect for the kite surfers who were paying attention to the wind report and were waiting for the kick up. 🙂
After a little while there, we decided to continue on down the road, but we were stymied yet again (airline hell, wrong turn, and now…). There was an accident on the little road we wanted to take (road into the bush, the only road in and out). The accident was bad enough that they closed the whole road. 😬 (just one lane each way).
So we went back to the lake, and I chatted with the kite surfer guy a bit while his lady friend was out using the kite. I learned that the different types of boards they were using were for different levels of wind–the regular wake-board looking board being the one for high winds (or a bigger kite).
After life flight came in (a helicopter, at least), and after a firetruck that had gone out to the accident pulled into the parking dirt parking area with us at the lake, I figured it was or cue to head out again.
So we headed on back down the road, getting there literally as the officer walked up to tell us we could continue “slowly.” I think we were the third car in line.
Let’s see… we drove around the furthest end of the lake, where the river comes down from the mountains to fill the lake. We could tell that the lake was a beautiful blue, but the lack of sun, I think, obscured the blueness, so it wasn’t the strikingly blue that i believe it often is.
Anyway, we stopped at the bridge that goes over the river because it was a little nerdy spot, being the view from Isengard when Sauruman is conjuring up the storm to keep the Fellowship from making progress through the mountains.
🤓
That was a beautiful view. Instead of a wizard tower, of course, it’s an expansive river bed–think 100-foot wide, shallow, fast-moving river. And maybe 100 or 200 more feet of river wash (stones and sand, mostly smaller stones). My measurements are probably off, but it’s big. 🙂
We drove from there to where the “other” glacier burn track was, but we weren’t too keen on it, so we drove to the Greenstone track, fording the river three times in our trusty little Sophie.
At the Greenstone parking area, we used the bathroom… hung around for just a little bit, and then headed back the road to find a place to sleep for the night. Some places were red camping (no camping) zones, and some green. So we found a place we thought we could sleep. I spent some time working on a blog post, and… that was the night. 🙂
PRTLEPAEPBTYFT. 🥰
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 