The Wrockfest Gong Show
It's been over a year since I've been to a proper Harry Potter fandom event (other than my own Harry Potter Club's regular meetups, of course, which are both "proper" AND "fandom"!) and I had registered, back during the summer, for Wrockfest. It was to be a wizard rock festival held at a Girl Scout camp in North Carolina, that was shaping up to be honest-to-God Harry Potter camp. Then we somehow lost our booking with the camp.
I received an email about the cancellation, and my refund was processed promptly, but I knew that the organizers were trying to find some sort of replacement event in the same area of the country. I also knew that whatever it was would inevitably be more expensive than the original event (because it was VERY reasonable!) so I pretty much resigned myself to not going. Then the replacement event was announced, and I went temporarily insane, and decided to go anyway.
Although accommodation was no longer included, the ticket price had also dropped dramatically, so while I knew it would be more expensive, I figured it would only be a couple hundred dollars over the original cost estimate that I had made. So I booked my flights.
The next thing that happened was they announced that they'd gotten us a hotel deal. In a DIFFERENT TOWN than the one where the event was taking place. Apparently there was some kind of large conference taking place in Greensboro, which is not a huge place, so hotel rooms in town were few and far between or sketchy (some mention was made of FLEAS! *shudder*) but the hotel being in Reidsville would necessitate me renting a CAR, which had certainly not figured in the original estimate. Not fatal, though, because we had more than enough Air Miles to cover four days of rental car.
This morning, I was copying down my flight information, and I realized that I had somehow booked my flights for the wrong dates. That's right, I booked on Expedia, and my search for flights on October 12 and 15 had somehow turned up results on the 13 and 14. And because it never occurred to me that a website search would give me different days than I searched for, I somehow missed that fact and booked them anyway. So, I was booked to fly to Greensboro, departing 6:30 am Saturday morning (instead of Friday) and arriving in NC at 10:30 at night. Ugh. THEN, I was booked to fly HOME again, leaving at something like 8:00 am THE NEXT DAY. So I was flying out a day late, and flying home a day early, and having NO ACTUAL TIME in North Carolina.
WHEN DOES THAT START MAKING SENSE???
Expedia doesn't give refunds, but they will do exchanges for an additional fee of $150 per change. So that meant to get it fixed was going to cost a minimum of another $300. I was at work today, so My Sweetie got on the phone to Expedia for me and ascertained that the price difference between the tickets when I booked them, and tickets now was close to $500, so in order to actually get flights that would work, it would cost us pretty much the original cost of the tickets all over again.
Bearing in mind that this trip was borderline more than I could afford already, this put it WAY outside the realm of possibility. I was prepared to eat the cost of the original tickets, which as I already said were non-refundable, and just cancel the hotel booking. However, although they don't do refunds, Expedia can give you an airline credit that's good for a year. Since My Sweetie and I were planning to attend LeakyCon in Portland anyway, we can use it for that.
I'm still angry, disappointed, and a host of other conflicting emotions right now (including relieved... did I mention that I couldn't really afford this trip?) but at least I'm not completely losing the $800 I already spent.
I received an email about the cancellation, and my refund was processed promptly, but I knew that the organizers were trying to find some sort of replacement event in the same area of the country. I also knew that whatever it was would inevitably be more expensive than the original event (because it was VERY reasonable!) so I pretty much resigned myself to not going. Then the replacement event was announced, and I went temporarily insane, and decided to go anyway.
Although accommodation was no longer included, the ticket price had also dropped dramatically, so while I knew it would be more expensive, I figured it would only be a couple hundred dollars over the original cost estimate that I had made. So I booked my flights.
The next thing that happened was they announced that they'd gotten us a hotel deal. In a DIFFERENT TOWN than the one where the event was taking place. Apparently there was some kind of large conference taking place in Greensboro, which is not a huge place, so hotel rooms in town were few and far between or sketchy (some mention was made of FLEAS! *shudder*) but the hotel being in Reidsville would necessitate me renting a CAR, which had certainly not figured in the original estimate. Not fatal, though, because we had more than enough Air Miles to cover four days of rental car.
This morning, I was copying down my flight information, and I realized that I had somehow booked my flights for the wrong dates. That's right, I booked on Expedia, and my search for flights on October 12 and 15 had somehow turned up results on the 13 and 14. And because it never occurred to me that a website search would give me different days than I searched for, I somehow missed that fact and booked them anyway. So, I was booked to fly to Greensboro, departing 6:30 am Saturday morning (instead of Friday) and arriving in NC at 10:30 at night. Ugh. THEN, I was booked to fly HOME again, leaving at something like 8:00 am THE NEXT DAY. So I was flying out a day late, and flying home a day early, and having NO ACTUAL TIME in North Carolina.
WHEN DOES THAT START MAKING SENSE???
Expedia doesn't give refunds, but they will do exchanges for an additional fee of $150 per change. So that meant to get it fixed was going to cost a minimum of another $300. I was at work today, so My Sweetie got on the phone to Expedia for me and ascertained that the price difference between the tickets when I booked them, and tickets now was close to $500, so in order to actually get flights that would work, it would cost us pretty much the original cost of the tickets all over again.
Bearing in mind that this trip was borderline more than I could afford already, this put it WAY outside the realm of possibility. I was prepared to eat the cost of the original tickets, which as I already said were non-refundable, and just cancel the hotel booking. However, although they don't do refunds, Expedia can give you an airline credit that's good for a year. Since My Sweetie and I were planning to attend LeakyCon in Portland anyway, we can use it for that.
I'm still angry, disappointed, and a host of other conflicting emotions right now (including relieved... did I mention that I couldn't really afford this trip?) but at least I'm not completely losing the $800 I already spent.