And One Last Thing ...

Just one last post before I become a marathoner for the second time.

If you thought the drama was over once we brought Iven home from hospital you'd be wrong. Yes, he was feeling a lot better. I had secured not just one travel companions but two. And it was all looking a lot better than it had 24 hours before. But I still had to do a bit of work to get my travel plans rearranged with Josh as my new travel companion.

His girlfriend Serena was now coming too. It was too good an opportunity to see some more of Australia to pass up. So there were flights to book for her and I had to see if it was okay to get another person in our room. No problems at all. The woman on the other end of the phone couldn't have been nicer or more helpful. She even booked us in to get an early check-in.

So far so good.

Then I had to make a decision about the plane tickets. My options were to get Josh to travel on his father's tickets. Identification is rarely checked when you check in at home so we probably could have gotten away with it. But I like to do the right thing and when I went on the website it looked like it would cost $40 both ways to get the name changed on his ticket so I decided to do the honest thing.

Big mistake!!

And by big I mean $365.00 which is almost double what I paid originally. Oh and I had to pay a credit card surcharge which I'd avoided the first time by doing a direct deposit. But their policy for name changes means that you HAVE to pay by credit card so you HAVE to pay their surcharge.

I stupidly thought that changing the name meant just that. Silly me.

No - changing the name means that you're handing in your tickets and buying new ones as well as paying the name-change fee. We had to pay the cost of the cheapest ticket available on that day which really wasn't that cheap minus what we'd originally paid.

But I was informed that if I submit a medical certificate they MIGHT refund me the $40 per sector name-change fee under their "compassionate" policy. The company has an interesting concept of compassion. My dictionary says it's the "deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it." There was no relief in what they did. They basically just sold us back the seat that we'd already paid for at a higher cost. Looks to me like profiteering from someone else's suffering.

So you'll all want to know what airline to avoid? Jetstar.

I was really upset about it so I posted on their Facebook page and was asked to message them privately only to be given exactly the same lecture that I'd been given over the phone the day before. I kindly suggested that they might like to look up the word of compassion and either change their policy or change the name of it. 

And today's little dramas - Josh is home from work with a sore throat, Toby has come out in an allergic rash on his belly and Iven is still not much better. But, surprisingly, I haven't resorted to medication. Yet.