In Reply to: 'something far worse' posted by shaddup on Thursday, 24. February 2005 at 15:29 Bali Time:
I wanted a 30 day holiday for myself and my lady friend. Emiko had never been to Bali before and I wanted everything to be just right. Although I was booking 4 months ahead, flights were already heavily booked and this had to be carefully looked into.
We were flexible in regard to dates and eventually the agent came up with what appeared to be a suitable return flight. Just a couple of weeks before we were due to go, I realised that we were booked for 31 days. I asked the agent if the 30 day visa included the day we arrived and the day we left Bali [making 31 days OK] and, would you believe it, she didn't know.
Naturally, after this I didn't trust her, so I phoned the Indonesian Consulate in Perth. They were very helpful and told me that we would need 60 day visas, which we would have to get before we left Australia at a cost of AU$60 each. They also explained the procedure, which involved 2 trips to the Consulate.
So I told the agent that she would have to do the running around and bear the extra cost. No apolologies, just whingeing about how much it was going to cost her. My understanding is that the extra day in Bali would have cost us US$20 each, but I didn't know that then. For all I knew, we could just have been put on the next plane back, or had to pay some exorbitant "donation". The agent didn't know either. And not even an apology.
Do you reckon that qualifies as "something far worse" than making an inappropriate reservation which I was easily able to cancel?