doh

So.. over the weekend..

I spent about I dunno.. let's see 18 hours planning a trip with 4 friends.

Person A
- can take two weeks leave
- can only take one week in october
- wants to take 10 day tour plus go to sapa
- is happy to go to the add on mekong delta

Person B
- can take two weeks leave
- wants to take 10 day tour plus go to mekong delta
- is happy to do the add on of sapa

Person C
- can take less than two weeks annual leave, more like a 10 day trip
- can't take any leave from the second week of november
- wants to take the 10 day tour only

Person D
- doesn't know when she can take leave
- might be needed for a conference on the 3rd of november
- is happy to take 10 day tour if she's available


With our extremely complicated schedules in mind,
we found a special to Vietnam that ended on the 30th
arranged with the travel agent the possible permutation of tours
she needed to figure out if we could make it to ghet markets for sapa and if that ended the correct date that persons A & B could get a flight out
travel agent tells us to book the flights with her cos it won't cost us extra and she can hold the tickets and we don't have to pay immediately as we were working the final part of the dates and trips on sunday

Monday - travel agent books our flights, and gives us the possible itineraries, so we can pay the next day. we are happy with arrangement.

Tuesday sms - the flights have gone up to $1,200 and the cheapest flight she can find us is $1000. She failed to realise because the special ended on the 30th, that despite holding the tickets the prices doesn't hold. Our tickets were $620. We could have paid them.

I would like to say she's stupid, or an idiot. But the reality is that its a possible mistake. Except pretty bad when that is your job. To arrange tours and flights.

Words really don't express our frustration and anger. Also the added cost as the only flight she could get us cost an extra day of annual leave.

Anyhow this leaves us therefore to evaluate if we want to pay extra flights, and the added cost of an extra days' annual leave. Assuming people's day at work earns them about $250 a day, then really her monumental screw-up is costing us the cost of the same flight.

She's offering us free insurance of about $100, which is basically no cost to her firm really because unless something happens on the trip and we need to claim, the outlay is nothing.