Well, I just purchased the first few tickets — guess there is a little time to put a halt to this craziness — nah! as exhausted as I am — this is pretty fun for a “techy” - I am purchasing for Santa and his helper — which makes things a bit more interesting and tedious — why is the purchasing flow on all these airline sites so painful? These have to be some of the most cumbersome pages on the Internet — …

Here are a few of my gripes about the booking pages as I purchase the airline tickets:

• <begin rant>
• First, I hate credit card input pages that don’t repeat the itinerary I just just selected — I am about to hit the credit card button and I want to cross check the dates and times and make sure I didn’t fat finger something — which I did — and had to go through the hassle of making changes (I’ll be highlighting those in another post later)
• I am making a “third party booking” for Santa and his helper and some airline sites don’t allow it — sigh — while others only allow it if you are a member of their loyalty program
• Why can’t anyone get the darn tab order correct, I am booking over 40 reservations and I hit tab and it goes from the address field to half way down the page to the “Yes, I want to buy travel insurance” check box — no I really want to enter the city and zip code after I hit tab in the address field — plllleaaaseee!
• What is up with the “do you really really really want to do it box” — I already punched a button that only an eagle eye vulture could spot to ding my card — then the browser throws up a dialog box that is hidden behind so the purchase never occurs - until i uncover hits hidden location …
• For that matter, as I book these tickets — why do airlines hide the darn “I accept all the mumbo jumbo conditions that I won’t read — and if I did read them I did wouldn’t understand anyway” check box — the only thing I can think of is that in a law suit to get your money back they have an argument that says “We made it so hard to find the “I accept button” — they must have known what they were getting into just to find it and press it …”
• Do I really have to put in my email address twice, come on, i can’t even review my itinerary before i ding my card without hitting the back button and loosing all the stuff I typed in - my email address once will be just fine
• Why the heck do you send me an email with nothing in it to tell me you are about to send me another email with something in it? — if i “ain’t” getting the 2nd one, I surely “ain’t” getting the first — is one of the two emails magically going to bypass my spam filters and not the other — spare me!
• Ok, I give up on the seat selection charts on some airline sites — there are 8 icons that mean 22 different things depending on if I am a Martian or the really clever airline sites that want to charge me extra for that “prime” location with a 1/4 inch more leg room — double sigh …
• The confirmation email — where do I start — I am trying to keep a spreadsheet to track everything and trying to find the confirmation code, departure date, flight number, and times is like an easter egg hunt — some of the fonts are so small and the text runs together — my poor already aged eyes are beyond squinting — might as well have sent me a rorschach ink blot …
• Ok, so here is a quiz, you make a booking and you need to add your frequent flier number after the fact — can you do it (our Santa only signed up for 13 loyalty programs after i booked a few tickets) — good luck adding that number unless you are a travel agent insider — of course my old friend Southwest has a button to do just this — my 7 year old daughter just helped me do 3 on additions on Southwest, click, paste, click done — amazing (we are learning some geography as tonight’s dad homework lesson …)
• <end rant>

Ten reservations down — forty to go — I am having to add sub folders to myGrumpy Santa email folder with titles by day to keep track of everything — What a pain & what fun …