Well, I WAS leaving ...

As I said earlier, I was set to leave and head to California for an meeting with the folks over at GameSpy about the News Editor position. As the song says, all my bags were packs and I was ready to go ... but occasionally, The Powers That Be decide that it would be funny to give you a swift kick in the ass. For this particular case, The Powers That Be recruited the "fine" folks at Delta to get a good laugh in.

Before I go into what happened and why, I need to rewind a bit for one piece of information. The Game Developers Conference is taking place next week in sunny San Jose ... as a result, most video game media outlets will be busy trying to get as much coverage as possible. This means that GameSpy was itching to get me out for the meeting before the end of the week. After all, if we couldn't it by then, GDC would throw everything off and I wouldn't be able to meet up with them until the week after. It may not seem like much, just an extra 7-10 days ... but it's a big deal. So, GameSpy went ahead and bought the plane ticket to fly me out this morning. Well, I'm NOT in Cali right now, so it's a safe bet that something went ... wrong.

I printed out my ticket, I was at the airport in plenty of time, and I was all set to go ... until the fateful moment that I hit the check-in kiosk. I scan in the ticket, and the screen pops up a message asking me to "Insert Credit Card Used To Purchase This Ticket". Apparently, Delta has a policy in place where if you buy a plane ticket with a credit card within five days of departure, you have to PRESENT the credit card at check-in. You see where this is going yet?

So, I'm trying to figure out HOW I'm going to make this work and get out to Cali today. The Delta rep at the desk offered me one solitary solution: She would cancel the ticket I had in hand, and then have me repurchase the SAME TICKET on my credit card for a higher price of $900. The higher price was because the ticket was technically a same day purchase. So, to clarify, Delta wanted me to CANCEL the lower priced ticket which had already been paid for so that they could sell me the SAME TICKET for a few hundred more. And all because *I* didn't have the credit card that the company paid for the ticket with. Yeah ... that wasn't happening.

I tried calling the Delta customer service number and didn't fare much better. By the time we actually got around to working out a new solution ... something involving me paying an extra $100 fee tacked on to the pre-paid ticket ... so much time had passed in the various misadventures of checking in that there was no way for me to get to an onsite service rep, get the ticket, get through security, and get on the plane. And so, the trip has to be rescheduled for the week after GDC.

So, your Public Service Announcement of the Day?

Delta sucks ...

As a side note ... I picked up Mega Man Powered Up on the PSP to give me something to do on the trip. If you own a PSP, you HAVE to get this game. So far, it's the best game I've seen on Sony's handheld ... though I haven't picked up Daxter just yet.