I'm Mistaking
A day late and a dollar short. Isn’t that the saying we heard as kids? Yes, and then we thought we were going to miss our flight too! That would add insult to injury.
Sometimes you wonder if all the events happening are trying to tell you something!! Maybe something like “Don’t get on the Boeing 737 Max 800!” This will be our second flight on the previously defective airplane. Keep on reading….
A few days ago we booked hotel rooms and flights for the rest our vacation here. We had only booked a couple flights and hotels of the three or four we needed and next thing Gary’s cell phone buzzed. We had a missed call from the Fraud department at Visa. We tried calling them back and the automated system told us we should have a case number that was provided in our voice mail. Guess what – no case number was provided so we couldn’t talk directly to the Fraud department. We had to contact Customer Service, verify our identity and finally get the case number. Then we had to call the Fraud Department again and work our way through the automated system and enter our case number, listen to a lengthy robot message of all our charges for the past several days and then verify we had actually the the purchases. Yes, we made them and still had more purchases to make! The Customer Service rep had assured us our card would work after we completed the fraud verification. We do rely on our Skype account for free phone calls to North America on our adventure. We also rely on our Ooma Voice Over Internet (VOIP) phone number while travelling too. We get calls directed to our cell phone anywhere in the world where we have data coverage. Both of these subscriptions cost peanuts and save a bundle when you need to send or receive calls back home.
The other screw up was with Agoda, the hotel booking system we use. We searched hotels for Penang where we are heading next. The web browser kept changing the dates and search filters we set. We finally selected a hotel and booked it. Then we got the email confirming our booking and realized that we were booked one day too soon! We immediately called the hotel who said “phone Agoda” and we phoned Agoda and they told us we can’t cancel without someone from the hotel giving their approval. Well many calls later and even one call with an Agoda rep on one phone and the hotel rep on the other phone and we couldn’t get the booking changed! This will be the first that we eat one night of hotel charges because of our gaff. Apparently, the hotel uses another company as middle man between them and Agoda, so Agoda and the hotel couldn’t speak directly to each other – needless to say we were very frustrated. We had no luck getting any one to give us one day back out of a 6 day booking. To make us feel better we did discover that Agoda was anywhere from 20% to 50% cheaper than other booking websites like Momondo or Tripadvisor.
Saturday, Nov. 19 we were up in decent time and down to breakfast early. Obviously there was a major change in guests since yesterday as this morning the breakfast room was filled with many German speaking people and few from India. After a quick breakfast we headed back up to the room to finish packing up. Shortly after 10 am we checked out and called a Grab. The driver profile showed it was a woman driver. So we waited for her arrival. She pulled in, got out of her minivan, looked at our luggage and said you need to call for a six person Grab. We were like, we haven’t had to do that before, every other driver just helped us load our stuff and off we went. Not her!! We finally said we are cancelling and will get someone else. Which we did. The irony of it was that the original driver’s car was much bigger than the car we got and could have had ton of room to spare to fit our stuff in. The smaller car we ended up with easily fit all our bags in the trunk! So we were off to the airport! At least we thought we were!! The new driver asked us where we are from. Then she says something about us taking the train to Penang? No, we said we are flying to Penang from the Kuala Lumpur airport (KLIA) and out of the International terminal. Well she says you have the train station selected as your destination! Panic by all ensued!! She was having a fit that we’d never get to the airport in time for our flight! We just wanted to get to the airport, KLIA to be exact! Not get dumped on the side of the road and have to get another Grab!! We finally cut a deal with her and she zoomed off to the airport with us. She was an amazing lady and got us there with time to spare. While we had time to decompress at the airport we reflected on the lady cab drivers we’ve had over the years while using Grab. As much as we don’t want to profile any one ethnic group, the women muslim cab drivers we have had over the years have been the most difficult to deal with, rude, grumpy or otherwise. The Asian, Thai and other women drivers have been so accommodating and pleasant to deal with. We’ll have to see if we get a lady Muslim driver one day who totally changes our current perception. And just to be clear, all the male muslim drivers we have had, we’ve had no issues with any of them – only the women – go figure. Overall today’s screw ups cost us about $115 CAD. We ended up paying $9.50 for the Grab ride to the wrong destination – because we couldn’t change the destination back to KLIA (instead of KLIA – ERL train station). We paid her 120 MYR ($35 CAD) in cash. The cost of the extra night hotel booking was $80 CAD one of the priciest places so far. We’re out $115 CAD due to the two screw-ups. While the Grab error we accept as our mistake by being unfamiliar with what the train station acronym was, the Agoda error was predatory on Agoda’s behalf. In the past we took a screen shot of a hotel booking before confirmation and when the screen flickered Gary noticed the price had increased. When looking at the screen shot we confirmed the underhanded tactic. Buyer beware! Yes, Caveat emptor! As far as booking Grab, we entered KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport) as the destination but for some unknown reason we don’t understand we got switched to ERL Train Station. FYI: The KLIA Ekspres train provides a non-stop express train service from KLIA ERL station to the KL Sentral in Kuala Lumpur. In the end the ERL station is in the basement of the KLIA main terminal. FFS.
Thankfully our flight was on time and non eventful. The 737 Max 800 plane is nothing but an old plane with bigger engines. When we arrived at our hotel we got checked in quickly. As we unpacked we found that the last guest had left the safe open but the deadbolt in the locked position. Linda called the front desk to get someone up to fix it. The front desk guy arrived and spent some time trying to get it to work. He finally said he had to get maintenance to come and replace the batteries. Several minutes later they both returned and changed out the batteries and messed around with it. Still no luck. He said he’d be back. So we waited and waited. By then it was 5:30 and we were famished so Gary went down to the front desk and said we really need this rectified. The guy came back and before you could say Bob’s your uncle we had a working safe!
With our valuables safely stowed in the safe we headed out to find something to eat. We thought we’d try a nearby Indian Restaurant. We had no luck finding it – there were reviews on it not that long ago. We aren’t sure if we just couldn’t find it or if it has closed. We headed further away to an Indian Restaurant we ate at a few years ago when we were here. The place was pretty much full and any empty tables were littered with dirty dishes and hadn’t been cleared. We finally found what we thought was a clean table at the back of the restaurant only to have one of the employees tell us to sit in the front section! Still no clean or empty tables there so we left. We hiked another couple of blocks and got to Holy Guacamole, a small Mexican Restaurant we’ve eaten at before. By now we were hungry and thirsty and couldn’t wait to get seated!! We enjoyed a few beer with our chicken fajitas. It was a great meal! We picked up some extra water at the 7-11 and made our way back to the hotel at a brisk pace. The sky was black and threatening rain. We encountered some thunder and lightening.
We got back to the hotel to find that housekeeping had never delivered our bath robes or hand towels that we’d requested before we left. This time they arrived promptly after our phone call. Hopefully tomorrow is a better day and we’ll wander around and check out all the street art if the weather cooperates. We particularly want to visit Penang Hill again but with the weekend crowds we won’t plan a visit there until at least Monday.