I hate Priceline.com, but I love my credit card company...

you probably didn't know it, but while i was posting up all those 'We are having a great time in Hawaii'blogs last week,  I was actually really stressed out...  it turns out the plane ticket that we had bought on Priceline (by outright purchase, not an auction) for Contest Winner Link had gotten misdirected and Fedex screwed up trying to return it...  meanwhile the clock was ticking,  counting down the minutes before Link was supposed to get to Hawaii to attend the Heavenly Kings Screening.

Needless to say I was having a horrible time dealing with their incompetent customer service.  every time i called them I found out what I had been told the previous time was not true...  it wasn't until 36 hours before the flight that they admitted they didn't know where the ticket was and because of same arcane rules, they couldn't even reissue it or convert it to an e-ticket.

Luckily I was able to purchase the same itinerary with only 24 hours notice on Orbitz with an electronic ticket.  (yeah orbitz!)  Link made it to Hawaii,  everything went really well...  (apparently the paper ticket did actually show up to Link's house.... a day or two after his flight!) :-P

The remaining problem was going to be getting my money back from those idiots at Priceline.  Two or three times I talked to 'Customer Service representatives' who apparently are authorized to say 'i am sorry for your inconvenience'  but not authorized to actually do anything about it! 

I finally found a free second this morning to call my credit card company (Chase Mileage Plus United Visa!)  their customer service rep was muchbetter.  I spent about 10 minute explaining what happened... they put me on hold, talked to some people and came back and said '...so we'll be refunding your money in about a week.'   bam,  thats it!  (is that REALLY all it takes?)

Somehow wow I'm sure Priceline will find a way to screw me one more time,  but its nice to know i at least have someone on my side who has the power to deal w/ the idiot brigade over there...  if all else fails I'll call 'Seven on your side.' ;-)

by the time you read this i should be somewhere over the pacific ocean again... another US trip...  maybe if I'm lucky I'll have been upgraded on this flight. ;-)