mum's no kiwi and tommy starts crawling

after a couple of months in new zealand my mum has decided the other side of the world is not where she wants to be. It's been great for her to spend Christmas with us all and to see tommy but she really couldn't envisage being here long term. So, back to Belfast via Hong Kong it is then. Had to change the flights with expedia as there's a strike at british airways which meant the original hong kong to london call was cancelled.

RANT ALERT - do not read on if you suffer from RANTAPHOBIA, a feeling of nausea and general replusion brought on byh the excessive and unwarranted ranting of a fool...

I purchased the original tickets online through expedia.com. To expedite (boom goes the dynamite!) my stay i did not create an account and simply purchased the tickets for my mother using a 'guest' account. Today i received an email saying that major changes were afoot on the itinerary, but that i had to ring up to chat about them. After ringing the US freephone (but not NZ free phone)  number, i got through to someone who said they needed to speak with my mum. I asked why, since i was the person who had purchased the tickets and added my mum as a passenger, and they said it was their security policy.

They wanted me to get my mum to confirm my email and phone number. Now, i asked why they don't email me a confirmation email and then i could email them back and this was prove it was me, or ask me any number of details about my credit card or booking, but they said this wasn't how they did things. I also pointed out that i could get anyone to act as my mother and that what they were asking me to do was not a secure way of doing things, and was frankly a pointless legal excercise. I used the word kafkaesque like some sort of twat and i think i almost caused the customer services rep to hang up in disgust.

Prudence said that she felt sorry for me and would ring my mother direct and then ring me back. 40 minutes passed and nothing. I received an email from the manager Carter who said that the account holder would need to ring back and only the account holder. I emailed him back to ask who the account holder was, as i had signed in as a guest, and my mother was the passenger. he said it was my mother, even though i paid for the account using my email address, which was not explicitly linked to the passenger account, but tothe transaction itself, making this very confusing for all concerned.

I rang up again and pretended i had never spoken to expedia before and got someone else who asked me my email and phone details before giving me all the details on the changes to the flights before refunding my card. Now, it jus strikes me as odd that one rep says i can't do anything and the other just goes and does it without even thinking, weird. Anyway, my advice would be simply to always create a real account on expedia.com and never ever purchase anything as a guest unless you are the passenger, otherwise it all goes a bit mental.

down in pauanui for a wee break, auckland has a holiday on monday. Tommyhas started crawling forwards as well as backwards now (he's 9 months old tomorrow) and was paddling and swimming in the estuary when we arrived down from auckland. Also, i had my first driving lesson on Thursday which went so well i actually drove all the way from Auckland to Pauanui, which is about a 2 hour drive, so very pleased with myself.