AirAsia=Absolutely Ridiculous!

Let me just tell you what has been happening the past couple of days. While Danny and Layna were here we tried to buy some tickets to Malaysia. We (Kevin, Stan and I) want to leave this Friday, January 7th. We thought we were cutting it close by buying the tickets at that time, but that hasn't stopped us from getting to our destination before. So we were just gonna buy them then. When we are traveling in China, we usually use elong.com or ctrip.com, but those are only for inside China. For traveling outside of China, AirAsia has the cheapest rates we've ever found! Well, I will have you know it has been the bane of my existence everyday for the past 3 or 4 days. It has consumed my thoughts and I've been able to concentrate on nothing else. We just want to get to Malaysia and hang out with Kimberly Washer and her husband, Gary. Don't know them? Find her blog here! She's a fellow blogger and Freedie friend! Anyway, we were trying to order the tickets and it just wasn't working. I'll explain:

First I tried ordering the tickets online. I got past the part where you enter in your passport info and to the part where you enter in your address and payment info. I was inputting Stan's parents home address, because that address matches the address on our payment info. (billing address) and most of the time it needs to match. (If you've stopped reading by this point, that's fine by me...I just wanna write this out!) :) Ok, so I clicked on the tab that says "Select State". I clicked on it and instead of listing the 50 States of America from which I could choose, it opened a box that only said, "N/A" I tried to just type in the state. It wouldn't let me. Ok, I thought, I'll just continue without choosing a state. When I did that, it said, "An error has occurred blah blah blah blah....." and pointed to the part of the page where I had not clicked a State.... confusion sets in. So, I decide to just change the address to a Chinese one and see what happens. It lets me choose a province. Yay! Now it let's me get all the way to the payment method. I put in all my information with my Bank of America (BOA) card, and it looked like it was going to let me do it, but then it failed. I don't know why. We have contacted BOA in the past, and did this year to tell them we will be spending money and to not lock up the card because we are in a different country. It has worked in the past, so there is no reason it shouldn't work now.

So then I decide to just call AirAsia and set it up that way. I look for the contact info, and click on China. It gives me a number. I call the number. The number is out of order. I call the number with a one in front of it, and it is a hospital emergency line. I say, "Sorry, wrong number." And hang up. Now, I decide that maybe we could live chat with someone on the website. Ah ha! There is a tab for that...I click on it. I have to be a member to talk to them. I become a member, and sign in. I click the chat live button. They make me sign in again. A box pops up and tells me everything the live chat function cannot do. I cannot order tickets, I will have to call the service line for that. Ok, I think that is one of my requests: a working number. A chat box comes up and says I will have to wait 93 minutes because I am the 63rd person in queue. I wait the FULL 93 minutes and finally talk with someone. I tell the lady about my problem, and I basically boiled it down to I need to get a correct number for the China branch of AirAsia. I ask the woman this question. She gives me all of the same info that is on the internet. I tell her this information is incorrect. She tells me this is all the information she has. She also includes the numbers for Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Both of which I cannot use my Chinese phone for because they are technically out of the country. So, we use our skype account to call Hong Kong. Some random man answers the phone. This is his personal cell phone. Not AirAsia Hong Kong. End. Of. Rope.

So, where do we go from here? How does a website ask for a State and then not let me choose one, and THEN say I"M doing something wrong??!!! How does an airline that has been voted the best airline for the past 3 or 4 years have a website that doesn't even have any of their numbers correct or up to date?! Just because it is cheap? How does that make for good business? HOW!! HOW!!!??? It's absolutely ridiculous. I just don't understand how it works. Because it has worked for us in the past without having to do any of the above. I've taken many deep breaths and I'm just about done. We were gonna go from Malaysia to Vietnam, so we may just end up having to cut out Malaysia all together. We wouldn't care too much, but we were excited about getting to meet up with Kimberly and Gary. *Sigh* Anyway, we shall see what happens. 2 days to go... I'll let ya know. John King, a friend and mentor of ours said this is a good opportunity to build patience. This is very true.

If you got this far in the blog, I pity you. You probably need to go take a nap from all the reading. You're a true friend! Haha! Thanks for reading! I love you all!