Little Birdie

God help the next person that wants to meet me somewhere in Cary, NC.

Now, I don’t often say this, being a woman myself–but clearly, a woman designed Cary’s road system.

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I wasted no time in squashing their pitiful excuse for a response:

I understand what the Message 1800 says, and I understand what a soft charge is. My Master Card is not a debit card, it is a U.S. card, I have a U.S. address, and I have ample funds available. It seems to me that if CheapTickets can make a soft charge to the credit card to verify funds, etc., and my card has ample funds, there should be no problem charging my card. Therefore, the problem is with your website, and not me.

I am extremely disappointed in CheapTickets “canned” answers to my problem. I simply would have liked customer service to book my flight over the phone for no extra fee because, by their own admission, their website was experiencing problems. Instead, customer service demonstrated that they have no training in how to really solve problems of this nature, and treated me in a manner that put me on the defensive. This email response is further proof that you do not understand my problem and are unwilling to help me.

Meanwhile, I used the same card on Hotwire.com with NO PROBLEMS. Combined with their customer service record as opposed to your unwillingness to understand my problem and resolve it, I will be doing business with them in the future.

You may think I have way too much time on my hands. You’re probably right. But I’m SICK AND TIRED OF OUTSOURCED CUSTOMER SERVICE BULLSHIT.

I will say this for them, they have a fast response time to scathing emails…

Dear CheapTickets Member,

Thank you for contacting CheapTickets®.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused.

Please note that the error 1800 means that: “Your credit card number is invalid. Please re-enter the number or try a different card. Please note that some debit cards will not work for online purchases.”

With regards to you query, please note that the $9.98 may be a soft charge, it is a temporary authorization that will automatically drop off your account within seven days, if not sooner. A soft charge is when CheapTickets asks for funds from a credit card / debit card company but
does not actually charge the card. By doing this the funds are taken out of the available credit on the card but not included in the balance that you need to pay to your credit card / debit card company.

Soft charges ‘Fall off’ or are added back to the available credit after 7 - 10 days. For further information, please call your credit card / debit card company.

For your reference, the following credit cards are acceptable on Cheaptickets Web site:
- American Express
- Carte Blanche
- Diners Club
- Discover
- MasterCard
- Visa

The credit card must:
* have a billing address in the United States, Puerto Rico or U.S.
Virgin Islands;
* be issued by a bank or company based in the United States, Puerto
Rico or U.S. Virgin Islands.

For cheap deals on flights, lodging, rental cars, vacation packages, cruises and more, visit www.cheaptickets.com today!

Thanks,

Amreen
The CheapTickets Team

Dear CheapTickets,

Your customer service representatives are unwilling or unable due to poor training and possible language barriers to resolve technical issues that are no fault of mine. I have been trying to purchase tickets on your website for 2 days without success. I receive Message Error 1800, although when I communicate with my bank they are able to verify that CheapTickets can successfully access my credit card and charge the 9.98 test fee with no problems.

When I told your customer service reps this information, they insisted that it was my bank’s fault, and when I assured them I had already talked with my bank, they said their website must be experiencing problems, but they were unwilling to book my reservation over the phone or waive the $25 phone reservation fee EVEN THOUGH I COULD NOT MAKE MY RESERVATION ONLINE DUE TO THEIR WEBSITE.

I will never purchase from CheapTickets again. Not that I had any success the first time. If I find a charge on my credit card after all this mess, I will call my lawyer. I would rather pay him than you.

Warmest EFFING regards,

LittleBirdie

I hate online bullshit, I hate outsourcing, and I HATE HATE HATE automated voice response.

And WTF is Message Error 1800?!?

I watched the Truman Show again last night. There are a thousand things to blog about this movie, but I’ll focus on the least-mentioned: product placement. “Everything on the show is for sale. The actor’s wardrobe, food products, to the very homes they live in.” (Christof) “And of course all of it is available in the Truman catalogue.” (interviewer)

Look around your desk right now, or wherever you do your blog reading. What’s there? I have:

• a Wendy’s Biggie cup with Minute Maid Lite Lemonade in it
• a Scotch brand tape dispenser
• a Kleenex brand tissue box
• Simply Basic (Wal-Mart) brand scented lotion
• Tatung brand monitor (what the crap is Tatung?)
• Intrex brand computer (don’t ask)
• Dell brand speakers
• a Boston brand stapler (because someone stole my red Swingline)
• a Sharpie
• a Glad brand container with Food Lion-bought white grapes in it (along with the grape bag that warns us away from suffocating our children and little penguins with it).

Those are just the items that are labeled in such a way that I can see the brand from where I’m sitting.

Brands really win when they become colloquialisms. You don’t research something; you google it. I almost said I had a Kleenex brand box of kleenex and a Glad brand tupperware container. And Sharpie…everyone knows that Sharpie is the thing that if your kid gets a hold of it, your walls are screwed. And everything else that gets in its path.

There’s no doubt about it: we are all brainwashed. We believe what the television tells us about how great something is, and we fail to research it. I might as well have said I endorse child slavery, solid waste pollution, terrorism, air pollution, deforestation, global warming (ack! global warming! we’re all gonna diiiiieeeee!!!!), inflation, embezzling, oil spills, species extinction, animal torture, and every other inconceivable evil on the planet.

The moral of this blog is, vote with your dollar. Buy local. Do your homework. Some products really are better than others. Figure out what’s important to you and stick to it. We can’t fix everything, and if we boycotted something every time the parent corporation screwed up, we’d all starve, freeze, AND suffocate to death. But we can have a voice. We can influence corporate America.

Put your money where your heart is.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye. –Miss Piggy.

This quote was on my Quote of the Day and I think its hilarious. “If you don’t think I’m pretty I’ll punch you in the face!” Classic feminism, don’t you think?

Feminism has been heavy on my mind lately. I hate it, and I hate what it has done to women. Empowering? I think not. We are now afraid to be beautiful but at the same time long for everyone to notice our beauty. We flaunt our bodies, and in the same breath we criticize or even sue anyone who dares to comment, whether it’s a stare or a cat call, or someone with the wisdom to tell people to cover up. “I can wear next to nothing if I want and don’t you dare say anything about it, you fascist pig!”

I’m all for equal rights, equal pay for equal work, and our right as humans to be respected by our fellow men (and women). And to be fair, these attitudes of women, and toward women, have been around since Eve ate the apple. And I can’t blame feminism for everything. I also can’t entirely blame the fashion industry, television ads, or the weight loss industry. But they sure don’t help matters.

Can you believe weight loss is an INDUSTRY?!? It even has a NAICS code.

And for the record, I am a card-carrying member of the weight loss industry. $40 a month will guarantee you a thin and healthy body. [disclaimer: $40 a month will not actually guarantee you a thin and healthy body.] Lose weight now, ask me how! But the sad reality is, I need to lose weight and I can’t do it on my own, and this is America, where anyone can make money off of anything.

Anyway. I’ll be posting more on this topic but I just had to get this rant out of the way. Thanks for shopping at littlebirdieopinions.com.

Well, I wanted to wait until inspiration struck and I poured forth a powerful creative work out of the creativity in my creative brain, but I can’t even think of a synonym for creative, so there goes that idea.

Sometimes you can’t wait for inspiration to strike in order to blog. That’s what’s so great about hosting your own blog (or having your brother host it) — you don’t have to rely on ratings or anybody even reading your junk in order to have a voice on the web.

I went on vacation last week. The first four days were pure bliss. I went up to the mountains with my husband, got rained on all day, fished for 3 or 4 hours and caught a variety of grass, leaves, and entire trees, and got cramps from sleeping on a 2-inch thick mattress in our pop-up camper. It was awesome.

There’s something about the mountains that helps me re-center. I was at peace, and so was my husband. That is a rare thing. We caught up on our relationship, reconnected, did all that mushy stuff, and just enjoyed our time together.

The first thing I did when I got back into town was lose my keys in Wal-Mart. And not just any Wal-Mart. A renovation-in-progress Wal-Mart. The employees didn’t even know where they were! How the heck was I supposed to find my keys in that kinda Wal-Mart?!?

After an hour of trekking up and down every aisle in the store, I got a brilliant IDEA (don’t ever get one of those, by the way) to stick one of those plastic coat hangers down the crack in the window and jimmy the lock. Yeah. Don’t ever do that either. I forgot the first rule of car security: what is locked from the outside must be unlocked from the outside.

So I turned into THAT PERSON. The one whose alarm has drawn many blatant stares of disapproval and several helpful suggestions to put my key in the ignition to turn the alarm off. Thanks. I’ll go ahead and do that just as SOON AS I FIND MY KEYS.

Finally, inspiration struck and I yanked the battery cord apart. No battery, no horn! Then I called my dear friend Dora (thank you thank you thank you) and she brought me home. Eight hours and five spare keys later, I returned to my car only to find that I broke the second rule of car security: what is locked with the automatic remote must be unlocked with the automatic remote. Sticking the spare key in the door just made it madder. Not only did it remember the plastic coat hanger, now it’s yelling LOUDER because I tried to open it the old fashioned way! And now the car wouldn’t even start!

I thought for sure I would have to fork out like $200 or more for a new remote. Car dealers hose you on those things. All seemed to be lost. My husband thought it would be a good idea for me to try one more time at the Wal-Mart “customer service” desk (and I use the term loosely) to see if someone had turned in my keys. Well, I was shocked and humbled to find that someone had actually turned them in!

If someone had really been trying to steal my car, I bet the stupid anti-theft system wouldn’t even work.

At least I’m not alone in this. Two days ago my loving husband called me from the Food Lion parking lot because he broke rule #1 too.

I love vacation

Have I already missed the boat? Has my calling already passed me by, and now I have to settle for something less? Have I made too many mistakes for even the grace of God to redeem my situation in life and set me on my destined course? What if this IS my destined course? What then? It’s not what I wanted and not what I thought life was going to be. Or, what if I never realize my destiny? Maybe it hasn’t passed me by, but what if it never comes? Are my own inadequacies, or fears, or just daily attitudes preventing me from ever reaching my full potential? How can I reconcile what has been spoken over me with what I’m dealing with in my life right now? What if the words were wrong, what if the “prophets” mis-spoke? What if I’ve been TOO timid in waiting? What if I’ve been too bold and screwed it up long before I knew what I was doing? What if the consequences of my past actions are just too great? What if I just can’t be trusted anymore?

What if I NEVER “get it”?