Boiling Blood of Injustice

Never in my life have I had as many blood boiling, my veins are popping out of my head, I’m trying to remain outwardly calm, moments, than in this country. The combination of lack of communicating power both in the spoken word and the inability to listen and comprehend fully and the complete disregard for customer service is a recipe for me to lose it.

The first time this happened was when Brian and Megan came in 2006 and had their return tickets taken out of the ticket pack accidentally. The ticketing agent ripped out their tickets for their return flight when they were checking in to arrive in UB. When we learned this, we went to sort out the matter.

They told me that nothing could be done and because they didn’t have the tickets and since they didn’t have the tickets, there could be no refund and we would have to buy new tickets for thousands each! I was losing my mind that day… I left the building and then started sobbing and screaming at my poor husband who took the brunt of that lovely experience. God completely restored that situation and miraculously allowed us to find the tickets (they were stored at the airport- unbelievingly!) and they returned home. That was Air Market. I never ever used that company again.

Since then I have been a loyal AirTrans customer.

The blood boiling happened again this week.

Backstory: We are trying to get a refund for our return tickets. We arrived at LAX June 10 with a reservation, but no tickets. We were told we had to pay $8000 to get back here. This is a complete error on someone else’s part. We had been in contact with both our travel agent and Korean Air and both parties said we were ready to board- not so. So we paid for the LAX to Seoul flight with cash and the Seoul to UB flight in frequent flyer miles. We were told to go to our travel agent. The day after we arrived, we went to the travel agent. They said they would look into the matter.

This week when we arrived back we went into the travel agent, Air Trans. They said they had a refund. Peter had jumped out of the car and I was still searching for a parking place. By the time I parked and got back Peter came out with the refund. I am glad that we got anything at all, but then logic started to kick in and long division and I realized how little they are giving us per person and then I grabbed the refund from Peter and went in to do battle.

I arrived at the manager’s desk. She ignores me for 5 minutes while she continues to work with a coworker about someone who’s flying in from Hong Kong with their children. Finally, she looks up at me. I tell here I’m here about a refund. These are dreaded words here. I explain to her what happened, that one of her agents told us that we were all ready to go and that our ticket could be extended to June 10 without charge, she looks at me with one eye squinted shut and reels. I repeat my story in Mongolian. A grain of understanding is between us. I tell her that someone else is at fault and that the refund isn’t enough. She then gets me a print out and some other women joins us. We are speaking a hodge-podge of English and Mongolian.

It goes something like this, I say, “We are not at fault here we need to know what happened. There must be a record of who changed our reservation date on the computer.”

She hears, “bla blah bla, June 10^th bla blah blah computer.” She looks at me quizzically.

I repeat in Mongolian something like, “my husband called before the March (the expiration date) your people said, ‘ok, no problem June 10 ok.’ We did no wrong thing. I want more refund.” It sounds rawer than that and with some poor grammar thrown in because sentence structure is different here and I don’t have a great handle on it.

She understands me though. She begins to type and asks me who my husband talked with. Sadly, we don’t know. I say there has to be a record in your computer someone changed our reservation date.

Nope of course not, the records are sealed and it’s a different system than in March.

At this point my veins are popping out of my head and I can feel my pulse in my forehead. I am boiling hot and wish for a fan. I am SO upset. My problem is that I expected a different kind of outcome. I wanted them to say, “You’ve been a loyal customer to both our office and to Korean Air, for that reason, we will help you.” But of course when thousands of dollars are at stake, everyone wants to blame everyone else.

They tell me that Korean Air has the “sealed records” that Korean Air issued the refund. They do print out the accounting from Korean Air. This at least shows me that the travel agent gave us all that Korean Air gave them. I know now, though I am still angry, that there is nothing else to do here. It’s not as if this poor women is sitting on several thousand dollars or that she’s hidden it in her desk drawer.

But THEN I notice that we have been charged a fee!!! They took money from the already meager refund for “cancelation charge.” I am then LIVID. I barely contain my spite. I ask again in two languages why we had to pay a fee when we did no wrong that someone else is at fault. She tells me that it’s a cancelation charge from Korean Air. NOW KOREAN AIR WILL HEAR FROM ME!!! They didn’t lose a DIME from our family. We (and our extended family) paid for the same flight two times and they were most likely able to resell our seats since we changed our reservations!!! I am so so so so upset. But these women have done all they can for me. Much to their relief, I leave with my meager refund and a print out. I will never return as a customer and now Air Trans is also black listed. I guess it’s a good thing that we’re moving back to America, because those are the only travel agents in the country!

I STORM out of the office. I cannot remember what color our borrowed car is, at this point, I can barely calm myself down enough to scan the horizon. I see Peter waving madly from inside the car because my eyes are blinded by white rage.

I step into the street, then I pulled myself together knowing that UB motorists do not yield for pedestrians and the last thing that Peter needs is to see me run down and killed. Then all the silly refunded tugricks (money) in my greedy little hand would have flown up into the sky in a wonderful cloud of green, purple and orange. All of the cars would have screeched to a halt, and the drivers and passengers would jump out to chase the money as it swirled in the wind; and no would have not cared that I was dead and bleeding on the street.

Ok, vivid imagination. (I wish you could see the images that this little paragraph made in my mind. I am laughing out loud as I write, at my demise on the corner of the city square!)

I safely cross the street and hop into the car. The children and Peter are spared my wrath because the phone rings. I go from screaming injustice, to sweetly saying, “hello.” Now Peter laughs out loud. The phone call is enough to calm me down. Then we arrived at our “sale” the large truck has arrived with all of our stuff and people are arriving to buy it. I hop out of the car and greet everyone and begin to organize the liquidation of our earthly possessions here in Mongolia. What a wonderful day! J