Even I Have Booking Frustrations

Yes I know!  You all think everything is smooth sailing for me when it comes to booking and planning my trips.  But really I only share with you the good, exciting, and fun things.  

Today while driving my bus I thought -- I need to share this with my readers too. 

Last night after work I sat down and proceeded to book our train travel for Italy.

We need two trips.  One from Civitavecchia to Lucca. Then another from Lucca to Venice a few days later. But that was not the issue.  

I quickly found the routing I wanted by checking out Rome2Rio then clicked to book. Hmmm that site doesn't want to give me the same routing. First issue!

Okay second option -- go right to Italy's Trenitalia homepage. Punch in my routing. Results are great. Discuss with Bernie on our best option. And even better they are offering a two for one!

Go to pay. Punch in my credit card details and realize my travel credit card has expired. Oh yeah I got new cards in the mail - need to activate them first. Second issue!

Try to get them activated but having issues doing that as website doesn't like what I am putting in and am told to call Mastercard to activate. Third issue!

After a few minutes on the phone the new cards are activated. Time to book the train tickets.

But the original booking has expired and I have to redo the search and choose the trip again. Fourth issue!

Try to pay and my Mastercard Secure Pay is not letting me pay with my new card. It is blocked! Fifth issue!

Call Mastercard again and they correct the issue and all is cleared and I am told to go ahead and book.

Back to the booking, but again the trip has expired and I have to do the search again. But this time it is not showing the two for one! It is about 20 Euros more each. Sixth issue!

Remember when I wrote a while back about always do searches and booking incognito (read blog about booking flights) well I was not using my own advice and of course Trenitalia recognized this and the repeated searches for the particular itinerary on that day and dropped the 2 for 1 option. Seventh issue!

So now I will wait a few days and redo the search (incognito this time) and book and pay for it.

See you are not the only one pulling your hair out at times when you take on the travel coordinating.