Once in a Blue (Honey)Moon, Part 2.

  So last time we left we had taken a leap of faith in trusting a sudden third party touring company.  The first of hopefully few snafu's happened concerning them and the trip.  Lori, the Travel Agent, sent me an quick email a few weeks ago saying,
  "Jeni's last name was misspelled on her international flight ticket.  So the company will have to credit the initial ticket and charge you for another ticket.  You'll see 3 charges and a credit (my ticket included). "
   I am paraphrasing, but the general message and feel is the same.  It seemed that it wasn't going to be a big deal  and they would just make a instant credit then charge, and we wouldn't notice the distance.  Of course, since I'm talking about it we know this isn't the case.
   So it took about a week after that for the charge (with an additional 2 cents) to show up as pending on my card.  The next day it went through and took a big chunk out of our wedding account.  I thought this was a strange practice, considering the refund had not appeared yet.  I am somewhat naive in this area, but I figured there would be no way they would make the second charge before the credit was applied.  I'm just lucky we have a good buffer zone in our wedding account at this point.  Still I figured the credit would follow in the next few days, it didn't.
  After a few days I was starting to get worried.  This compounded with the fact that to get to the actual airline, I would have to get through at least 2 middle men to talk to someone who could do something was really upsetting Jeni and I.  I sent a message to Lori inquiring about the situation, asking about the status of the refund and also why the ticket was 2 cents extra (out of curiosity).  She looked into it and it seems that the credits and debits are dealt with by completely different departments at Air New Zealand.  She attempted to track down the credit, but it seemed it was somewhere lost in corporate loops.  Every couple of days I continued to check the account looking for the credit, to no avail.
   We kept going back and forth with Lori, it had been almost a week and a half.  Lori even offered to write us a personal check for us until the credit went through.  We refused, but it was a nice gesture to show us that she was definitely in our corner with this.  I was trying to get names and numbers of people to contact within the travel tour company and / or Air New Zealand to try to bypass the middlemen, but just as I was resorting to that, the credit appeared on the account.  Almost 2 weeks had passed since the charge on the account.  This really made us relieved, but also furious that it had taken so long.
  There were many things that make no sense in this whole process. (1) Why could the name on the ticket not be changed?  Its obviously all electronic, and clearly as a programmer, I know that this has to be editable.  It may have something to do with security, but I have a feeling its more to do with corporate stupidity.  (2) Why did the credit not happen before the charge?  For a large portion of people who aren't as prepared as we are,  they would not have a buffer zone in their account, and would not really have the breathing room to loan a large company over $1000 for almost 2 weeks.  (3)  How could it take almost 2 weeks to process a credit to an account?  (4) Finally, why was the charge 2 extra cents?
  Well we do know the answer to (4)... it turns out the New Zealand exchange rate had changed slightly in the few weeks since the original tickets, so we lost out on that (dang!).
  Anyway, it all turned out OK, but it doesn't instill a lot of confidence in this long chain of people middlemen.  At least we know that Lori is behind us and on our side for sure.  Hopefully this is the only snag in our trip, and I'm hoping we can get all the stress done before we depart so we can have a wonderful honeymoon.   Tonight I get to look over activities to do at the Glacier!  More parts to come maybe.
Cheers!