The opportunity to reschedule our departure to Cape Town to get a better fare was going to expire today, so I screwed my courage to the sticking place, put on headphones, and called British Airways. Their voice menu was mercifully short (only two questions, each of which only had three options), but then they hit me with the dreaded statement that “wait times may be longer than usual” and began playing BA’s theme music, the Flower Duet from Lakmé by Léo Delibes.

After about 30 seconds, a voice interrupted the music to remind me that wait times may be long, and then the music resumed for another 30 seconds. After a few cycles, I took off my headphones and put the call on speaker so I could work on editing the minutes from last night’s Shir Hadash Ritual Committee meeting.

I was still working on the minutes when, a mere 75 minutes after calling BA, I was connected to an agent. I explained what I wanted to do (fly a day earlier and get a refund for the difference in price). She set off to work on my request, putting me on hold while she worked. I got to hear a lot more of the Flower Duet, occasionally broken up by her reporting on progress or asking me questions. I did more editing while I waited.

It took another hour, but she delivered most of what I wanted. Our flights have been rebooked but not yet re-ticketed (that will have to be done by the Reissue Department), and we’ll get a voucher for the difference in price – almost $1500. The voucher is good until the end of September 2023, so there’s a decent chance we’ll get to use it before it expires. And if not, we’ll be no worse off than if we’d stayed with our original flight schedule, so I’m fairly happy with the result.

After the call ended, I finished up the minutes and sent them out; it sure was a lot easier to concentrate on them then.

I’m beginning to have my doubts about Iberia Airlines. Their system recovered overnight from the attempts I made yesterday to book flights; when I looked today, the fare and seats I wanted were available again.

I proceeded through the booking process, entered my credit card data, and pressed “Purchase”. A screen popped up: “We are processing your payment. Please wait.”

10 minutes later, the site said I’d been idle too long and threw me out – when I went back, the seats and fare I wanted were locked up again.

A few hours later, today’s failed purchase had cleared. I tried again using a different browser with an empty cache. It made no difference – the process still froze after I entered my payment details.

I called Iberia for help; after 10 minutes of “our agents are busy”, their system hung up on me. I sent a DM to their Twitter account asking for help; it’s been seven hours with no reply.

But their Twitter account came to the rescue – by accident. I looked at some of their replies to other complaints; one reply asked “have you tried clearing your cache or using our app?” Clearing the cache hadn’t worked for me, so I downloaded their app and was able to actually book our tickets, pick our seats, and make the purchase with only the usual amount of hassle.

We’re set! Finally. I hope.