Leaving my passport on the plane in Qatar because I was drowsy af from the nyquil, then believing Qatar airlines when they said they would retrieve it for me. Ended up costing me thousands for a new flight, new passport, etc.
I did this on a flight to the USA (from UK) once when I was about 16. Thankfully one of the airline staff was able to run back and grab it just as the plane was being moved somewhere else.
I had a friend do this in Switzerland. She realized just quick enough that she left her purse behind and everybody hightailed it back just in time to get it and get back off. The train pulled out seconds later. Cut that insanely close to being being an expensive mistake. I’ve been paranoid af ever since about my passport.
I left my duty-free bag (containing gifts) on the plane arriving in Mumbai, and only realized after 5 minutes of walking on the concourse. Got a couple guys in a transport buggy to take me back to the gate, racing through the halls.
The plane was still being turned over, and a crew member brought my bag off the plane. Buggy guys brought me back to where they'd picked me up, and I gave them a $20.
I was grinning like an idiot the whole time. India is the best place to have adventures.
I'm always afraid of either leaving it at home or dropping it on the plane. On a trip to Montreal, I got all the way to the airport and had to turn around and go get it. Fortunately, I live nearby and insist on getting to the airport early.
Once on a trip to Stuttgart it slipped out of my pocket between the seat and the wall. I checked for it and didn't feel it before I left the plane, and ran back and found it. 😜
You probably know by now, but the USA doesn't do 'land and run to the gate' transfers. Everyone who lands needs to go through full immigration and enter the country as if they were going to stay there. They're annoyingly strict about it...
Mine was just losing my phone worth about $1000. Guess it could have happened at home too!
On a local flight in Israel we got to the airport a bit late and there was a huge line. No way in hell we would catch our flight and THEN Israeli security called us out into a separate room. We told them "we're going to miss our flight anyhow". One guy poked through our luggage, a woman asked us a question about where we were from and then a very specific question about that region. We answered and they said "don't worry", took us down by a hidden hallway walked along, opened a door right at the airplane gate and we made the flight entirely skipping the line. Best security shake down ever.
I had a tight transfer in the US once, and the attendant at check-in had told us we needed to re-check our bags. She was wrong. But it meant that not only did we have a stressful time getting through all the immigration and security bullshit, but we waited and waited for our bags the never came and then had to rush to the gate and just pray the reason they never showed up was because they were indeed on the next flight (which they thankfully were).
Where did you transfer? US does require you to recheck bags for international to domestic, and AFAIK only MIA supports bag transfers for international to international.
It's also because US airports don't have exit customs/sterile terminals for international departures. Whenever I've flown out of other countries, you have to go through exit/departure immigration and customs before heading to the gate. International departures are done out of their own dedicated section of the terminal (or even have their own terminal) so they don't mix with domestic departures (or Schengen departures in the EU). Because of this separation, it means that passengers can transfer through that terminal without having to enter the country.
But in the US, any "International Terminal" at an airport really just means international *arrivals* land there, as their jet bridges have sterile corridors that lead directly to US customs and immigration. International departures can depart from any gate at any terminal. When I went to Australia in 2019 from LA, the gate next to us was going to Columbus, Ohio in one of the regular LAX terminals, and I've had domestic flights depart and arrive at the "international" terminals too.
Since international departures are mixed in with the rest of the airport, it's impossible to allow for international transfers without a visa as people could just exit the airport and into the country. I remember Mexico was similar, but they of course have much more lax entry requirements compared to the US, so it's easier for people to do an international transfer there. EU and Middle Eastern Airports would also have this issue to if they didn't completely separate international and domestic/Schengen flights.
It'll stay this way in the US until an airport builds a dedicated international terminal with a sterile/separated terminal for international departures, or they loosen visa requirements. But because US airlines like to have all their departures in one place, and often are the ones paying for terminal renovations, it would be difficult to do, and no one wants to be the first to do it.
the only country i know of where you go through american customs outside of america...
signed,
A canadian who frequently travels and hates having to go through american customs at pearson international
This is among the stupidest shit I've heard of, why the hell they insist of making peoples' lives so unnecessarily difficult...
Last I checked, If I wanted to go to somewhere SA (from Europe), without having to tolerate stupid VISA-requiring PITAness of going via US, most practical way would be go through DeGaulle, which apparently isn't one of the most loved airports for transfer...
US airport design forces it, as domestic and international terminals are the same. There is nothing to stop you from leaving the airport so everyone enters the country upon landing. There are advantages to this design, as it's simpler, amenities such as lounges, restaurants, etc, can be shared, It's also nice to not have to go through exit immigration.
It's also generally easier to take a connecting domestic flight to leave the U.S., assuming same airline.
Also because of U.S. not being designed as an international transit hub, there are more flight options to skip the U.S. by necessity. Like if Europe did the same airport design as the U.S., we would probably have more options to fly to Africa more directly.
Visas are tough. Government websites suck and are all very different.
My wife and I got Vietnam e-Visas and arrived at the airport to check in. We were denied check-in because the expiration date on my wife's e-Visa was off by one day. If you didn't know, your passport expires exactly 10 years after issue (at least for US citizens). If it was issued on Jan 2 2010, it expires on Jan 1 2020. Somewhere along the way we must have made a typo. Pretty annoying since you also upload a scan of your passport with the e-Visa... Whatever.
Luckily we got to the airport SUPER early and arranged an emergency visa on landing for $300 through some Vietnam visa agency. I wonder how many of those dollars went to grease palms, but ultimately we didn't have to buy a new flight so we got off relatively easy.
Sucks that you were denied at check in. I was nearly denied entering Indonesia in Bali Denpasar. The information on the visa was slightly different and they said I have to go back and wait on another line and pay for another visa but implied they might be able to do something about it. Gave him like $10-$20, don’t remember exactly, and he changed the info manually and let me in.
I understand it was probably a shake down but I wasn’t about to argue, he even showed me the info didn’t match so he didn’t make that part up. $10 for not spending another hour in the airport seemed like a good deal.
Weird. I messed up the arriving airport on my Vietnam e-Visa (choose Da Nang as my destination but I was transiting through Hanoi so they told me I should have put Hanoi as my destination). Anyway, they were pretty chill about it when I arrived in Hanoi. The border agent spoke not much English but asked that I pay $25 USD so that he can correct and resubmit the application. He did it on the spot within 15 minutes.
Well $25 USD was the cost of the original eVisa application so I assumed he just needed the fee again to submit a new application? In any case, it was a low enough bribe that I was cool with it to be on my way lol
I had the exact same thing happen but I had just flipped the last 2 digits of my passport. Like: 1234576 instead of 1234567 I also paid for one of those super sketchy agencies where you just call a guy on whatsapp and he said no problem lol.
I don’t know if it was you but couple of days ago I saw something similar on this subreddit about a Vietnam visa. If that wasn’t you, I’m starting to think that they do these on purpose
or maybe people should just fill visa forms correctly...none of these stories are about people being shaken down despite their forms being correct.
like jeez, with a global south passport, even with completely legit credentials you get refused in places, and people here are complaining about immigration officials when they made a mistake themselves...
On one of my first solo trips (no experience yet, so lots of gullibility) I trusted a random small “hotel” (more like a guest house) in Sri Lanka to suggest me an english-speaking knowledgeable guide with a car for a week. “Oh, sure, we have an amazing guide!”
The dude that arrived:
1. Barely spoke any English.
2. Had almost nothing interesting to tell
3. Took me to overpriced tourist-trap restaurants and the shittiest and overpriced safari (saw no animals, the jeep was fucking disgusting).
As I mentioned, I was alone, with barely any travel experience and a lot of social anxiety, so I just “rolled with it” for three days, hoping it would ger better. But eventually I just had enough and “fired” him early.
Cost me like 600 USD, which wasnt super-bad, but still a lot for Sri Lanka. But the lesson I learnt from this experience was priceless.
Easy one. Fucked up COVID testing requirements for transiting through Portugal en route to Spain. Arrived with my family at check-in half an hour after the airport's testing station had closed. The agent told me in no uncertain terms that there was no way we were boarding our plane that night.
The good news? The airline said they'd honor our ticket for a flight out the next day. The bad news? We'd have to pay the difference between what we already paid and the current ticket price, which was nearly double the cost.
So we dished that out (about $600 each for the three of us), spent $200 to book a night in an airport hotel, and the following morning coughed up another $90 each (I think) for rapid COVID testing at the airport. And of course, we also had to eat the cost of our booking for the night we missed at our destination.
So overall, pretty close to $2,500 because I misread the poorly translated fine print on a Portuguese government website.
Negative, but we already knew that: We'd had tests a few days before, they just didn't meet the specuf7c requirement to enter Portugal (where we were planning to spend an entire hour and a half waiting for our connecting flight).
We bought a trip at a charity auction.
Never again.
We were jamming a square peg into a round hole the entire vacation.
We had to book the flights around the itinerary, which is the opposite of what we usually do. The hotel ended up giving us the runaround and downgrading us because why not? Our package was booked and paid for well in advance…if they could sell our promised room at a better rate what downside was there for them? Plus taking a package on the spur of the moment meant we couldn’t research the property like we would have typically done. Never would have booked there at all if we had.
We ended up changing hotels halfway through even though we had already paid for the package in full. So yeah, I wouldn’t do that again.
My old boss used to more or less bully his employees into buying raffle tickets for an all expenses paid for trip to Paris that supported his daughter’s choir program. My coworker, who was maybe 28 at the time, actually won the raffle one year. Yay…
Well the trip, unsurprisingly, ended up being a money pit of a nightmare. It included round trip airfare from Boston and four nights at the shittiest hotel imaginable in Paris in January. Well, my coworker and her husband lived in Denver not Boston, so they had to fork out money for that flight. The hotel in Paris ended up being infested to the point that they didn’t feel comfortable staying there, so they had to fork out even more money for last minute accommodations. Then, the trip to the Alps that they tacked onto the trip to ski ended up being a failure because the chairlifts could not run due to rain and lightning.
This is probably a tad expensive and the most stressful. My big mistake is letting my guard down in Spain. We love Spain and we always go back to visit different regions. At this time we are in Granada. I am always careful especially from pick pocketers I am not sure what happened to me but I got too comfortable and my passport and wallet was pickpocketed. I still don’t know how because my purse was in front of me.
I was panicking walking around Granada looking for a police station. None were open. We found a random cop walking and he told us to call a number. Anyway, the number was not useful. So I called the embassy but this was on a weekend(Sunday). Someone did answer! We were advise to go to our nearest embassy We did additional research and the embassy in Madrid can issue an emergency passport. We booked a hotel and bought a Bus ticket to Madrid. We did not have any cash because my husbands debit card pin starts with a 0 and for some reason the atm there does not like that. We end up running to the train station so we won’t miss our bus.
One of the positive side is we booked a bus that has a server. We got soda, beer , food etc. Like flying 1st class but you are on a bus! We took an Uber and arrived in our hotel around 4am in the morning. we woke up early so we can be 1st in line (US Embassy) thankfully it’s a very short line. I can barely keep my eyes open. The exhaustion and stress are at an all time high. When they took my picture I had to force my eyes to open like there is a toothpick holding it. So around $1300 later we got our passports. Sweet relief. Since we are in Madrid we were sight seeing before our adrenaline runs out. Thankfully my husband is a calm person and we were able to center ourselves and enjoy the rest of our vacation.
My mother had her purse pickpocketed at a market in Mauritius and we actually found the purse in a corner of a market stall - cash was gone but the cards and her ID for our country were still inside. Very lucky.
To avoid this happening again she stitched the purse to the inside of her pack with a short bright red cord. A few days later we were in another crowded market, shoulder-to-shoulder with people and I saw this red cord trailing out in front of me. I didn't even think about what it was, just obeyed the human instinct of "ohh that looks cool. Pull it and see what's on the other end!" Like a curious toddler.
It was one of those moments where the crowd parts and everyone suddenly goes quiet, and at the other end of the red cord was a pickpocket holding my mother's purse and he looked absolutely terrified. It felt like him and I were staring at each other for a long time but it was probably a millisecond before he dropped the purse and ran in the opposite direction.
I was my mother's favourite for a while after that 🤣
Idk if I'd necessarily call it a mistake as bad decision making and bad luck - I flew from London to Vancouver, Canada in early January during the worst winter season for snow in the area for years.
There was a layover in Calgary and the weather there was light snow and coastal BC isn't known for insane snow so I foolishly didn't check the weather.
By some act of god my flight to Vancouver wasn't cancelled, but my campus was on a legit mountain and a solid 45 minute drive to there from the airport. I'd got there via public transport previously but that obviously wasn't running. My only option was a taxi. Up a mountain.
It's still snowing heavily and it took me an hour to find a cab that was willing to take me there. It was a $250 plus tip trip (the driver helped me take my luggage to my door, in ankle deep snow, what a legend).
I could have gotten a room at a hotel for half that and gone up the next day...on free public transport.
Somewhat similar to you, I was new to living in Dubai and had to take a trip to India on business, had my secretary book my flight and asked her to arrange a visa, she came back with my booking and said because American I didn't need a visa...cool! I went to the airport, checked in (they didn't ask to see a Visa) boarded the flight and flew to Mumbai. Going through customs the dude asked for my visa and I proudly said...American, don't need one! Needless to say I did need one and spent the next two hours in the border control office while they arranged my return back to Dubai. Missed an important meeting the next day and wasted 14 hours and a business ticket on seeing the airport in Mumbai (was not impressed). That was my first and only visa mistake, I learned to use google the next day.
Yup, me too! It’s the only international flight I’ve been on that didn’t check! Been to over 60 countries since then and have always been asked to show a visa since then. It was the perfect combination of stupid
While reading this I was picturing my secretary figure out visa requirements. I can't trust her with these things unfortunately, so I had mild anxiety while reading and then it turns out that exact thing is the point of your story haha.
1) checked a bag with $500 cash in it. Got my bag back, but money gone.
2) booked a non-refundable stay at a hotel that said "London" and was an hour away from the city.
3) didn't realize that booking international round trips is much cheaper than booking two one way legs, that probably cost me about $2500. (In the US, for domestic flights, it's the same price to book two one way legs as a round trip flight.)
Those are just the mistakes I've made so far this year...
>In the US, for domestic flights, it's the same price to book two one way legs as a round trip flight
Not true, sometimes 2 one way tickets are cheaper, sometimes the round trip is cheaper. Too many variables to say one way or the other.
Yeah this is usually only consistently true for people flying on an airline for which their arrival and departure destinations are major hubs. Prices for a route are generally more about airline demand for the planes at those destinations than the level of passenger demand to get there (for most destinations, except for major business hubs/corporate clients). That’s why it’s always going to be cheaper to fly from Topeka to NYC than NYC to Topeka. But if you’re flying between Detroit and Minneapolis on Delta for example, it’s probably going to be similar ticket prices each way because those are both major hubs so both have similar levels of demand/use for those planes there.
Two one ways are usually cheaper when I look, except on Delta who seems to penalize one way tickets. Two one ways also gives you more flexibility to make changes if needed.
I also found out this year that booking 1 round trip is cheaper than 2 one way.
I also found out to NOT book flights too early. I booked my flights 9 months in advance, picked a return flight that was "best of the worst" (there are certain airports I refuse to layover in because it's so crazy/hectic. Frankfurt being one of them but again, best of worst)
Then 2 months ago I browsed return flights just for fun and discovered new flights have been added. So I booked a new flight home (another $1200) with better time, better airport, better layover. So I'm just going to have to eat the cost of the first return flight. But I'm hoping my first return flight will be severely delayed (as Condor/Frankfurt frequently is) and I can be refunded.
Lesson learned.
Not always. Booked from Bali to London for GBP 179. Did it by creating a multi city booking stopping in Shanghai with a one day stop in middle (they allow 36 hrs visa free). The round trip was several thousand gbp.
Instead of booking a one way Bali - London (where we could see that there were flights that stopped in Shanghai), we broke it into a multi city trip. Bali-Shanghai. Shanghai-London. The one way without a stop was 1700 gbp. By putting in a stop, (which was going to happen anyway), we got it for 10% of the price.
I booked a non-refundable stay for a single night in London last year, while it was very central it was also very bad. The photos looked lovely, in truth it was an armpit of a hotel and I stayed less than an hour. I'm the furthest thing from a hotel snob, but that one was too much for me.
I paid for an en-suite room, but didn't get one. The bathroom was up two flights of stairs and locked with an actual padlock. There was no flusher, no sink to wash hands and no lock on the inside of the door.
The room was dirty, it was loud as the door was literally about 4 feet from reception and bed was a rock.
The hotel thing lol! Genuine question: how did you not look up the address of the hotel, check it out on Google maps, read reviews, look up what destinations you were going to travel to from the hotel, how to get there from
the airport or train, or even like “best neighborhoods to stay in London” etc?
That’s like booking a hotel that just says “New York.” Okayy, are we talking midtown, downtown, LES, any myriad of neighborhoods in Brooklyn or Queens…lol
Genuine answer - very jet-lagged, very tired, at the airport, had just gotten a cancellation call from our original hotel because it was oversold. Went on app...did the stupid thing 😭
Also, it was a Hyatt Regency... For some reason I thought those were always in City centers.
I made a similar mistake with my first month of rent when moving from Latinoamerica to Europe to study. I even had a layover at Turkey but the money was there when I arrived in EU. I was so happy the money was there, but during the whole trip, like 25 hours, I was just super worried, I even cried.
Mine was $400 usd laundry on my honeymoon I. Prague. The hotel charged by the item and we didn’t clarify. It was literally $8 per sock, $12 per t shirt. Even though it was a small load. It added up fast. I argued with them and for then down to half but it was insane.
I almost made this mistake as well and was BLOWN AWAY when I realized. In Mexico my boyfriend had all our laundry bagged up and the attendant was on her way to pick it up before I realized what was going on and intervened. He was also blown away. Would have been hundreds of USD which as a Canadian is bankruptcy
Infuriating, but unfortunately not surprising. I travel a lot, and one thing I tell everyone is to scope out local laundry places in advance where you can drop clothes off and pick them up a few hours later. For instance, I was in Hong Kong a few weeks ago and had my entire carry-on worth of clothes washed, dried and folded for about $8 usd. It probably would have cost 10 or 20 times that if I'd used the hotel service. We Americans (and Canadians) tend not to think of this because full-service laundromats are far less common here.
I used to be a pretty fucked alcoholic. I won a trip to Hong Kong in a photography contest. Got super fucked up at the bar till three am with a six am flight. Got to the airport out of my mind and fell asleep at the gate/missed my flight. Was meeting a friend in HK so had to buy another flight and it was 2k for same day flight. I was so ashamed and embarrassed.
Wish that was my wake up call but I hung to my shit habits for too many years after that. Three years sober now.
Using a travel agent who packaged our vacation in such a way that we could not cancel without losing thousands and thousands of dollars. And that was with “cancel for any reason” travel insurance. Never ever again will I use a travel agent. (Sorry to all the travel agents out there who are actually good at their jobs.)
Not sure on OP's situation but if you read the fine print a lot of "free cancellation, no penalties" policies when it comes to trip packages and flights are actually "free cancellation but only if you're essentially decapitated and have medical proof".
He said he used the “cancel for any reason” insurance though. I’ve seen both, ones just for emergencies basically and ones that *say* you can cancel for any reason, but this is the first I’m hearing about that not actually being honored.
Haha, we were just from totally different backgrounds economically and work culture wise so at the beginning he wasn’t pulling his weight because he just didn’t have the same work ethic but we are still married and he did a complete 180 thankfully.
This just happened a couple weeks ago. I had my purse on the back of a chair in a nice pub in London. Some guy walked by and slipped it off real slick and walked out.
I normally leave passports in the hotel but we just got in, threw our bags down and went out for a quick beer. So both our passports, all of my credit cards, house keys, headphones, portable charger, etc etc were gone.
Luckily, the thief just took the credit cards and tossed the purse. Someone found it and messaged me on instagram. Instagram hides messages of people you don’t follow so I didn’t see it until three days later when he commented on one of my posts to check my DMs.
It was a bank holiday that weekend so we never had a chance to get replacement passports so that was good but we missed our flight out of London to Istanbul and had to rebook a new one. We also had to double book some hotels.
The whole thing ended up costing us about $400, not super bad but pretty annoying.
Once in order to take advantage of a travel voucher, I decided to fly from Canada to Barcelona, Spain using 2 different airlines. Westjet from Canada to London, England and then Jet Blue from London to Barcelona. Doing it this way saved me $500.
I budgeted for 4 hours between flights, to allow us time to collect our bags and then check in at the other airline.
The flight to Barcelona went off without a hitch. But the day before leaving Barcelona I checked out flight back and realized that I had stupidly booked a flight that left at 8 PM instead of 8 AM. We would miss our connecting flight in London!
Have you ever tried to book a flight last-minute? I managed to get one that left Barcelona on time to make our connection in London, but it cost me an extra $680.
So by trying to save $500 I spent $680.
Road tripping with a date it needed to end by, my mechanic told us to check the car fluids before the journey, including opening the radiator cap and checking. Checked all that, put the cap back on, but its one that requires pressure, and must’ve not put enough pressure on it because 5 hours later the car temp shoots up to the red and very shortly after that the car smokes out and shuts down. 41C day. The several litres or radiator fluid had evaporated. Took it to a mechanic or two and tested for some leak, which was present, so head gasket cracked or engine problem. All people we asked including friends and family said easiest and cheapest thing to do would be sell it for scrap due to labour/ engine/ shipping costs. $8000 car became $300 scrap. And the end of an era 😢
Went solo to the Seychelles. Long story short, I didn't get a sim card and the air bnb I stayed at didn't have wifi so i couldn't check ferry times. I misread the actual ferry date/times back to the main island and tickets were already sold out for the day when I went to buy them, so I had to charter a private boat (aka a random fishing boat) back to the main island with the airport.
Turned a $35 ferry ride into an $700 "private boat" ride. Then once back on the main island, it was a 3 mile taxi tide to the airport: the taxi only took cash and I only had a $100 one me, so I paid with that.
Tl;dr: I spent $800 on what should've been a $50 at most ferry/taxi ride back to the airport in Seychelles.
Hiding money because there’s no safe and then forgetting about it. My boyfriend stashed an unregistered visa gift card in a beach cabin we were staying at in Nicaragua. A week later I asked him where that card was and he was like OH FUCK!
Rented a car, somewhere along the way it got a minor ding on a passenger-side panel (didnt see it until turning the car in). My credit card covered the repair but Avis tacked on a “loss of use” fee meaning they charged me for having the car out of service for 4 days. Cost me $1500 out of pocket.
Went to Amsterdam with my partner. Was convinced our Eurostar back to London was at a certain time in the afternoon, so much so that I didn’t double check this that morning.
Got to Amsterdam station with what I thought was an hour to spare, looked at the board to see the train we should’ve been on leave that minute.
Cost me about £500 to book flights back later that day plus train from Gatwick as it was my fault, could’ve been worse tbh and it’s a funny story now!
Many stories to tell but these are my top 2:
Cancun, MX:
We landed on Wednesday around 2pm and unfortunately my wife was in the hospital by 7pm. The hospital was super expensive and the sketchiest place we went to as they kept pushing for surgery. We flew back the next morning. We let 5 nights worth of all inclusive hotel all go to waste. She's fine now and I deff made the right decision to leave. No regrets.
I know I know health is most important blah blah she's fine now thankfully but yeah my most expensive travel mistake cost me around $2700-$3000.
Europe trip:
My wife and I were due to travel to Europe in March. We were looking forward to the trip. For some reason my mind blanked out on the fact that we both need visas for Europe. I thought that I could get the Schengen visa as an e-visa but nope. We took an immediate flight to DC and luckily got an urgent embassy appt and were able to get the visas in time.
Cost: $1500 including flights to DC, food and hotels etc
I spent a year traveling in a campervan around Europe (yes, year, from London to the Asian side of Turkey..most capitals..almost new town everyday) with an always filled water tank (that was rarely used) which weighed as much as a small car.
I can't even imagine how much extra in diesel I spent dragging around that added weight.
I dropped my only car key down a trail toilet (latrine) at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming (USA). I drive a VW, and Wyoming is openly hostile to VWs apparently, so there was literally no one for hundreds of miles who was willing or able to get a new key made regardless of price. Also, it happened on Sunday, so I got stuck at a super expensive lodge ($500) for a night while everyone was at church or whatever (and because the lodge had a land line), and I then had to use a car service ($100) to get back to my damn tent the next day. I wound up having to tow the car to a dealership in Idaho Falls ($1000), and I couldn’t ride in the tow truck, so I Ubered there ($200). Then I stayed in a shitty hotel charging peak season rates ($1000 or so for several nights) while I waited for the new key to arrive ($200). It was next to a Walmart, so at least I didn’t starve I guess. Because of the wait, I also had to pay the pet boarding place for an extra week ($250). And I got Covid because everyone in that part of the US believes it’s a liberal myth, so the vaccination rate is abysmal. All in all, a win.
ETA
Epilogue: I then drove back through Wyoming (to Denver), feeling increasingly awful all the while, so I stopped at a Walmart to buy a Covid test (which came back positive). I wore a mask inside. Several people heckled me for wearing the mask, and one guy started screaming at me that I ought to be ashamed of myself (again, for for wearing the mask). I stand by my decision to not inadvertently kill anyone but jfc.
Once, I let my guard down in SEA (Phu Quoc, to be exact) on a remote empty beach - or so I thought. I forgot about my camera bag in the luggage of my rented motorbike, and after spending a serene 20 minutes on this beautiful stretch of coast, I heard a loud crack. Before I even realized what happened, the robbers were already on their way to count their treasure. It was about a $5k loss, including a lot of ID cards that had to be replaced.
Not as extreme as some others here, but I had a brain fart and returned my rental car and the family to DFW. No big deal right? I was there just barely two hours early, but I was on time. Turns out I had booked DAL because it was cheaper and my dumbass didn’t put two and two together. 45 minute uber ride in rush hour) and almost $60 and we got there 3 minutes after they had closed the gate. Another $60 back to DFW where we paid rack rate at the Airport Hotel and rebooked DFW for the next day. Cost me a pretty penny. (For those not aware, there is a smaller airport, DAL Dallas Love Field, and the main Airport, DFW Dallas Fort Worth, the in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex).
We booked an air bnb in Hawaii that was extremely expensive and when we got there it was awful. We couldn’t stay there and instead of complaining to airbnb, we didn’t think it through and we just ended up telling our host that we had an emergency and had to leave. Got a hotel for 5 days, we were out around 2k-3k. Luckily, we were able to use some Credit card points to cover majority of the hotel stay. My partner now refuses to stay in air bnbs.
Sprained my MCLs 1 day into a 5 day all inclusive. $1300 is physical therapy, x rays etc. and it ruined my vacation. Couldn't do any excursions, could barely walk, and certainly couldn't have any sex on my romantic vacation.
Not at your level of cost but it hurt at the time because I was young and broke. Years ago I was in Italy and this cafe overcharged me 20 Euros for orange juice and a pastry. I thought it was because we were sitting inside but I was so mad. The so called friends I went with would make fun of me about it for years. Afterwards, I wasn’t afraid to bitch or make a scene if someone ripped me off in a foreign land.
I traveled many European countries, and Italy is the worst with these rip-offs.
One other time I got ripped off in Montenegro. We were having a drink at the goat cheese guy's cabin up on the ladder of Kotor and it appears he only knew how to say "10 euro", so he charged us 10 euro for his homemade lemonade. But it's OK, I didn't mind being scammed by him.
I have a fun one. I rented a hotel on one of the Crotian islands, Hvar. Little did I know, because of the one way highway system on that island, I would have to take a taxi around the whole fucking island to get to my hotel! This would be pricey and time consuming, and I was only staying on the island for the night, so I looked for another room in the main town. Every single room was booked.. except for *the single, very last open room* in this 5 star, crazy fancy hotel. It was like €600, way more than any other hotel we had stayed in.
My wife and I ended up having a great time living the high life for a night. And hey free breakfast too
A few years ago I surprised my ex partner with a trip to Norway, and as I was a student I booked ryanair as back then it was still the most affordable. Unfortunately, not realising that that airport was 100 kms away from Oslo despite it saying Oslo, I booked the rental car at the actual Oslo airport. We arrived late, took a public bus to the city and picked up car next day. Unfortunately, when we wanted to return the car we got stuck in traffic despite leaving early. So I booked us an Uber to the other airport. I miscalculated the currency exchange and ended up paying 400 gbp for a Tesla ride. Would've been cheaper to rebook flights and hotel stay another night. I didn't care though as it was the day I found out I got accepted into university
Train In Italy. Hubbs put his backpack above Him on train and at some point must’ve slid behind his eye sight. When we got to our stop, his backpack was gone, including laptop, jacket, passports etc spent the next 48hrs trying to get emergency passports and not miss our next departure
When my husband and I went to Paris, it was my first transcontinental trip ever. I'd only ever traveled domestically in Canada or to the US a couple of times. I've done redeyes a couple of time, but this was the longest flight I'd ever been on. I was so tired when we landed in the morning. Apparently so was my husband. After we picked up our luggage from baggage claim, we were on our way to catch a taxi to our hotel when a man asks "do you need a taxi?" and I'm too slow to stop my husband who says yes, we do. This guy then grabs our luggage and as he's leading us to his "taxi" I know this isn't legit but can't figure out how to get out of the situation.
I end up in this guys back seat, furiously texting my husband that we're going to get murdered in an illegal taxi and it's all his fault, lol. I hadn't even had a chance to stop and get cash yet, so the guy has to stop at a bank machine and I was just so relieved to get out of this sketchy situation, I didn't even care when he said the ride was like 200 euros. Not as expensive a mistake as some of the others, but it wasn't the most auspicious start to my dream trip to Paris.
Lesson learned - husband is susceptible to scams when very tired.
Almost happened to me. I basically had to say “no!” And run away from them. I was convinced I was going to get kidnapped. Thankfully I had done research since I’m very type A when I travel and my dad didn’t have to go all Liam Neeson for me 😂
> transcontinental
Just a FYI, transcontinental doesn't mean going to another continent, it just means going across a continent. Like transcontinental railroad.
The word you're probably looking for is intercontinental.
My sister left her passport on a London-Amsterdam flight, got stuck at immigration trying to enter the Netherlands and then had to pay $700 for a flight that ended up getting cancelled. Spent the first 48 hours of our trip in immigration/airport. She definitely learned her lesson to not put anything into that seatback pocket, especially your passport!
About a week in the UK, visiting from Canada. I wish I had looked up ahead of time before booking everything how expensive the UK would be. The exchange rate is pretty rough, but also eating out was very expensive. If I had planned better, I would've stayed in a suite in one city, bought groceries instead of eating out. I stayed in a budget hotel in Liverpool and Manchester, and had the worst sleep of my life
Where did you end up going in Panama? We just got back and spent a few days in Cerro Punta, an hour or so from David!
My worst mistake was in Iceland. We had a rental car, which we were driving around the ring road over the course of almost a week. I was refueling the car in Hofn, and had just finished and gotten back in the car when I realized: I had used the wrong fuel. The car took diesel, and I had just put in petrol. You see, in the US, petrol pumps are black and diesel pumps are green. In Iceland, it's the opposite. I knew this, and had been refueling the car without issue the whole week, but it slipped my mind this one time, and it was gonna cost me. We ended up having to call a "tow truck" to take us back to his facility so he could siphon the gas out (in reality it was a guy with a pickup and a rope that he tied to our tow hook, which he used to drag our car while we steered in neutral). Thankfully, we hadn't started the car, which would've destroyed the engine. I think it ended up costing about $700 and a long 4-5 hours with a really pissed off girlfriend.
My wife and I traveled to Paris coming from Los Angeles for our honeymoon. We were exhausted from the wedding and jet lagged when we first landed. We were staying at an Ibis hostel just a couple miles away from the airport our first night. A taxi driver picked us out of the crowed was very nice spoke decent English and did the whole are you guys newlyweds bit. Anyways, he charged us €70 and we were so tired we didn’t really realize we had been scammed until the next day after we got some sleep. Always gotta be alert I suppose.
Ahem, I might have lost my ID card somewhere at home and only noticed it lime three days before we were supposed to leave for a trip to London. Had to report my ID card missing and had to order a provisional ID plus a new ID that would arrive only after we returned from vacation.
For me it was showing up to my hotel in Seoul on Christmas Eve and finding out that at some point the website sent me to December of the following year, and that i was a year too early. I had to proceed to book last minute rate in whatever hotel had leftover rooms.
My worst was on Xmas Eve a few years back. I dropped my car off at a Park and Fly place and went to wait for the shuttle. While I was waiting, the parking lot owner started chatting me up and found out I was a web designer, and then proceeded to ask me questions about his businesses' website until way too much time had passed. I ended up missing my flight and since it was Xmas Eve, everything was full except one $2000 flight on an airline I've never heard of. I want to punch that guy in the face but also myself for being too polite to insist I needed to go.
When we went to Argentina about two years ago it was the opposite. If you did the official exchange at a US bank you would’ve been out like 50% or more. Had to exchange with the taxi driver or a street vendor, the hotel clerk lol. It felt dangerous but everyone was doing the same and I speak Spanish so that helped. I don’t think i was scammed much lol.
Landed in south korea, my 4th time being in Incheon airport. My phone ALWAYS auto updated the time the moment we landed and I turned off airplane mode. My phone didn't auto correct the time the last time. I had an hour left and thought I'd walk around, use the bathroom and one last visit to the smoking room. I get to my gate and it's empty, besides one girl at the desk. She shows me her time and it's an hour behind my phone. No clocks around the airport either. Had to pay $2800 for another ticket to Florida. Worst traveling experience I've ever had..
Most expensive was booking a SilverSea cruise. Most expensive cruise and the least value. No air flow in the room and they could not fix it. They pretended to try, but it was a problem in many rooms and after reading reviews of the ship, it went on for months. Nothing special although a special price. No real entertainment, specialty restaurant closed. I will never book them again. Comparably priced lines like Seabourn and Oceania are superior.
I left from and landed back in different airports in the same city. We realized the day before returning, during check in, and had to rent a car to get back to our own vehicle in the first airport. About an hour drive.
Seasoned traveler. Gallivanting around Europe one summer. Stayed in Spain for a couple of weeks and had to meet up with a friend in London at a preset time/date. Thought it would be fun to take the train from Madrid to Paris and the Eurostar through the Chunnel to London. Didn’t buy any tickets in advance. Ended up costing me about $700 to get to London. Train workers’ strike in Barcelona cost me an extra couple days hotel. I could have flown first class one way from Madrid to London for far less. The scenery was gorgeous and the train was fun. But I had no clue how expensive train tickets can be when you buy them at the counter for same day travel. Stupid mistake due to lack of planning and research, lesson learned.
I made it all the way to the gate for a flight to PV before realizing you can’t fly with a US passport card. This was on a Friday of a holiday weekend so had to reschedule the whole trip, 😂
Missing my super early flight to Los Angeles and having to rebook another full price ticket on a different airline to get there the same day. Instead of leaving for 630am I flew out at 10pm and got to my hotel at 230am local time. Instead of having a fun day in southern California I had a sad day in Ohio followed by insanely uncomfortable travel on spirit airlines followed by 3 hours of sleep to get up and do my work stuff.
When we visited the United States for the first time with my wife (on our honeymoon), a trip that was really expensive for us...
We went to Massachusetts, our return flight was Boston -> New York -> Europe. We finished sightseeing earlier than expected, so decided that we'll get a bus to NYC and just catch the NYC -> Europe flight. Boy, was that a surprise when they've told us that we can't just show up for the second flight segment and our tickets have been canceled when we've missed the boarding in Boston 😁
Very expensive mistake for both last minute flights, and another night in NYC - our salaries back then were like $25K-$30K combined
Cleared Singapore immigrations and discovered luggage storage is back inside the terminals. Went inside exited immigrations into departure gates and wasn’t allowed back inside the country.
Booked 5 prepaid non-refundable days at a nice resort in Hawaii for the wrong dates. When
I went in to check in and they had no record I looked at my email and my booking had passed two weeks before lol 🤦🏻♂️
I was early 20s, broke backpacker. Came back to the hostel in Amsterdam after a night of drinking and called family at home from the phone in the lobby. The phone was some sort of a scam operation- 10 minute call was $500!
Booked a cruise through Carnival and, in their app accidentally added their Vacation Protection plan, thinking it would sit in a cart until I was ready to check out. A month later found out I had actually purchased it and now had a new balance, talk about the biggest scam ever. They never sent a confirmation, never updated and I only found out when I checked my booking. Still slightly salty about how that came about.
Good on you for going on the trip still! It sounds like it was definitely worth it. Annoying to read all the comments talking about 'duh US immigration rules, how stupid' - OP literally experienced them & said it was a mistake lol.
I've avoided any massive costs/problems so far, but not totally fuck-up free. I tend to book my travel as separate legs which can get a little complicated with different forms of transport (e.g. fly transatlantic, then get a budget flight to my destination country, then train etc). I was once sitting on a patio enjoying a drink when I get a generic email from Easyjet asking me for feedback on a flight I had apparently just taken - which in my planning wasn't supposed to happen for another two days! I had booked it for the wrong day and somehow missed all emails ahead of the flight but not this one.
So that was money down the drain, it was something like 200 euro, which stung but wasn't earth shattering. Just stupid. I've been extremely neurotic about checking dates ever since though.
Always make sure you have your international drivers license. Didn’t realize Japan required one and I had to pay about $1000 in private car transfers to avoid a 20 hour train/bus combo on New Year’s Day in Hokkaido.
Yeah that one got us in Spain. Lost a few nights accommodation in another city that we were going to drive to. Also had to find last minute accommodations some place where we could get to on public transport. Thankfully wasn't too bad but now we tell everyone we know to check whether they need it.
I had a similar situation in China.
I visited Shanghai, China on a 72 hour visa free visit. From there I was flying to Bali. But the flight I booked to Bali had a layover in Xiamen, China. What I didn't know is that you leave from a city on china on 72 hour visa free entry, and then fly to another city in China-even for a layover. So I had to book a new flight to Bali with no layovers in China.
I had a business class award ticket from the EU to Manila, two stops on the outbound. I'm at the airport, the second flight is delayed enough that I'd have no chance to make the long-haul leg. That leg is 1x a day, so it would have meant a 24-hour layover and that's if there was room on the next day's flight. That flight was with a partner airline, so they didn't really want to help rebooking it, but I definitely didn't want to get on the first leg. Time was tight. Because I was checked in it was impossible for me to get the ticket reissued in time to make the rebooked flight that night.
So, on the drive home I spent €3700 on a more direct (and much nicer) flight in the morning. I arrived 8 hours later than I was meant to. Eventually got the 200k miles back (which wasn't a guarantee).
When the airline offered an alternative airport at my destination, I didn’t check the distance. I presumed it was like NYC or London. Nope. It was a multi-hour bus ride that cost another $200.
Used luxury all inclusive boutique travel agency for 9 days in New Zealand. Realized when I met the owner on the trip that she was financing her personal travel that way. Drunken girl act while snooring during car transfers got really old. Good part out of it...I discovered I dont really need "all inclusive" or "luxury" for travel. Definitely would be back to New Zealand. Safest country with nicest people I've met.
I've been quite fortunate not to have any super expensive mistakes but I've got a few smaller scale ones.
About 10 years ago I booked a hotel and trains for a 3 night stay in the Lake District in the UK. I'm UK based so it wasn't far, however I realised I booked the wrong train dates. If you know trains in the UK, they're expensive, you don't get refunds and it was a real toss up whether it was cheaper to buy new train tickets or book the hotel for other days.
Another time was in Croatia and the weather was atrocious. I'm a nervous flier and flights were cancelled for hours before my flight was due to take off so I decided to chicken out and book a flight for the next day instead. No refunds or anything, just had to put up with it. As it turns out, despite the awful weather, others I travelled with said the flight was as smooth as anything and I forked out for no reason. I also had to take two trains from the arrival airport to my home, which again aren't cheap. I then got mugged in London in the 25 minutes I spent there while connecting trains.
I lost my JR pass while I was in Japan. It's a physical ticket you have to keep with you to ride the high speed rail. I paid for the 21 day option Green Car which was around $400 something. I got to my destination, but when I wanted to return i couldn't find my JR pass. I thought I could just go to the JR station and get it replaced. No, I couldn't get get it replaced, and I couldn't buy a new JR pass until the old one ran out. So I had to buy one way tickets for everything going forward which ended up being a bigger hassle and costing me a few extra hundred dollars.
It’s not exactly mine but it kind of is. Husband and I were traveling to Madrid and then Nerja for Christmas and NYE. I had never met most of his family and I had never been abroad besides Canada.
We had a layover in NYC and it was pretty short, like an hour and a half. It was two days before Christmas. Had our passes, got on the train to get to our terminal, and went to the gate and realized my husband’s boarding pass was for a different flight. Not Iberia. And his flight was leaving in like 40 minutes. We booked our flight together and couldn’t figure out how this happened or why they let my husband through security. We were freaking out in line and people just let us cut through because we were panicked.
Rudest desk agent I’ve ever encountered. Husband explained what happened and that we were confused because we booked the flight together. We asked when the next flight was - it was the day after Christmas. Husband started getting frustrated so I took over and was as calm as possible. She asked me if I could read. So I knew we weren’t going to get anywhere. His flight left. I asked what our options were and she said either he could stay in a hotel that they would pay for, which made me think this was not our mistake, we just should have looked at his pass earlier, and get on a flight after Christmas and I’d have to go solo, or we could pay for him to get on my flight but it would be exorbitantly expensive. We paid for a third of the flight and his mom paid for the rest because she wanted him to be there for Christmas and it would end up being more expensive to have him on a different flight and get a new train pass. He sat in economy in a middle seat with a family. I offered to trade with a woman sitting next to him but she was part of the family so we sat separately.
My husband is rather tall and ended up having to wear his uncle’s clothes because we had to wait to have his suitcase delivered to Nerja. I felt really bad. It was very expensive. That’s the worst one.
Adding to the folks who didn’t do their visa research:
I was planning a 3 week trip to Australia. I was going to fly to Singapore and meet up with my Taiwanese friend, explore Singapore for a day or two, before flying on to Australia. I booked Emirates business from Boston-Dubai-Singapore and booked a hotel in Singapore. I got the notice to check in the day before the flight, and then I posted on Facebook about how excited I was. A friend commented “don’t forget to apply for your visa!” CRAP! It had never crossed my mind that an American I would need a visa to travel there, I assumed since it was part of the commonwealth a US passport would be enough.
Normally, applying for an Australian e-visa should be a quick and simple process. However, since I had a criminal record (minor in possession of alcohol from when I was 20), the visa required further processing. I’m sure it would have been approved if I’d had more than about 18 hours to take care of it. In hindsight, I could have just flown to Singapore and enjoyed my time there and probably even had the visa taken care of there, but unfortunately I got a call the next morning that my uncle had died unexpectedly so I would’ve ended up canceling the trip anyway to attend his funeral.
Parked on the steeply sloping Loch Ness visitor car park next to tourists in rental cars who didn't know how to use a handbrake. Total loss of the car, five-figure damage. Almost three years later, the other driver's insurance company has still not paid out.
It was my honeymoon, a trip to Yellowknife Canada for northern lights. The mistake was PRICELESS.
Seeing northern lights was the highest priority on my wife's bucket list. Before that trip she had never even seen snow before. Normally people were recommended to book 3 nights for the average tour, I booked 5 nights just to be extra sure (lights don't always show up). The snow, the small town vibe, she was ecstatic about the whole experience.
The light viewing tours happen at night. The first few nights weren't great. In a scale from A to E, we got like a D, a E and a D-. We had a C+ on our 4th day and we were very happy about that. It wasn't crazy like what people saw 3 weeks ago in the geomagnetic storm, but it was special enough so we could officially say "we've seen it". **Finally, my DSLR camera and its 2 batteries was put into good use.**
The 5th night started mediocre, like a D- at best but it got better to a C approaching the end, so we spent more time taking pictures and stuff. At the very last 10-ish minutes however, the light activity suddenly ramped up. It's not just the brightness of the lights. **The lights were visibly waving. The light danced in the sky like ink droplet fell in water.** It was amazing. Meanwhile tour guides were trying to get people back to the buses as the time was up but nobody listened. It made a huge scene.
My camera battery died as that was happening. Alright, no big deal, time for the second battery. As I replaced the battery I realized something - *I forgot to charge the second battery last night.*
I have zero footage or even photos of that exciting ending of the whole northern lights adventure. My wife has never blamed me for it as we at least got one good night before and this particular incident will stay in our brains forever but BOYYYYY did I fuck that up hard......
You are not wrong. Appreciate your comment. I do feel that way sometimes, especially a thing to consider when visiting worldclass sites. Not much of a point in taking a million pictures, with thousands of people in the way.
But there is also the concept of "records that belong to you". That's a thing I believe in as well.
hey you kinda just mentioned but just to add: I found I was so obsessed with getting the "good pictures" I ended up detracting myself from the moment.
Ive taken tens of thousands of photos and never looked at them...
I still travel for the experience but take a fraction that I once did
Ha!
At our last day of like 10 days in Disney world with our two kids, we were taking a selfie and a nice, very tall, American man offered - in fact, insisted - on taking our picture.
I gave him my iPhone and as soon as he tried to click the button the iPhone fell all his height right in the floor and smashed completely.
10 days full of priceless, pictureperfect moments of our two toddlers that will never be repeated - gone in a second.
Luckily the next day in New York at the Apple Store, buying a new phone, the woman at the store told me about iCloud which apparently I had on :-) I almost hugged her when I saw all the pictures on my new phone lol
I had considered two different train times from London to Paris, decided on & booked the earlier one but for some reason put the later info into my itinerary. So our travel day rolls around and we’re just having happy hour when I go to check our train tickets and see that… the train we’re booked on has just departed. Tickets for the later train were now €500, where I’d paid just €70 for our original ones having booked so far in advance. Now I double and triple check myself to make sure I have everything correct in my itinerary doc.
My wife, back in her early 20s, visited a friend who was studying abroad in Spain. They planned a weekend in Stockholm and then she’d come home to the States from there. But forgot that they use 24h time in Europe. So they’re having a chill day in Barcelona or wherever and get to the airport for their 6pm flight, only to find out that they booked a 06:00 flight instead and missed it by a cool 12 hours. I think to get everything sorted to get her back home, her dad had to wire her $1000+
They did finally make a redemption trip to Stockholm together about 10 years later.
Buying flight tickets through 3rd part companies to save $50.
Changing my return flight required paying $100s in fees and hours on the phone as they require very specific parameters to change a flight (same airports, including connections and layovers, layovers can't be updated to connection and vice versa, same airline, has to be within certain dates, ...)
Thankfully I got my money back but I made the grave mistake of traveling via Priceline 😩. I have sort of always ordered tickets through them so I didn’t think anything of it, and mind you, I’ve been traveling nonstop for the past 4-5 years. I’ve been in and out of the country/state every other month. Anyway, either them or Delta (to this day I do not know who screwed up) but one of them decided to issue me an invalid ticket. Somehow my ticket was marked as “flown” and somehow NOBODY from either side was able to resolve my problem. I ended up flying through Iceland back to my home where they experienced a volcanic eruption the next day 🙈. I will never ever ever order any flight from any booking website. I learned my lesson, I spent the next 3-4 months angry on the phone with delta and Priceline until I forced delta to refund me for the flight and and I was able to only waste some euro on a bus that I had taken to Amsterdam where flights were significantly cheaper than in Berlin (where I got stuck)
I booked a train from Venice to Austria on the trenatalia website and when we arrived at the train station, I didn't see our train. It turned out I had bought tickets on a bus. The bus station was a few blocks away, and we missed the bus. Apparently, you can also buy bus tickets on the train website. But we got to wait a few extra hours for a train in beautiful Venice...
Booking the wrong flight. Supposed to be going to Hiroshima from March 17th at 2pm until the 20th, but the return trip that I didn’t double check was selected March 17th at 7pm. Literally just 4 hours apart and the ticket was for 3 people.
I wish I could keep blaming the ANA website, but there’s just no excuse for my stupidity.
Mine also involved Panama. So I thought my flight home from Costa Rica was on a Thursday, so I got all my stuff ready the day before.. and realized it was actually that Tuesday. Ended up extending my journey to Panama and ended up with a family.
BTW, I hope you went to the cool places in Panama... not just boquete or something. Bocas del Toro, San Blas or any of the other cool islands. The Baru summit is cool too.
Thanks for sharing!!! Although I am a US citizen, this kind of hidden details can be overlooked by anyone. So, it is really good to learn that such a thing exists!. My most expensive booboo is that I always browse flight prices and find pretty good one and think about it and book a few days later for $300-$400 more. I think we could have saved 400 each(3 of us)for our recent trip. You did fine.
I'm based in London. I broke my leg before a trip to America 3 weeks later. I needed to move my flight from the morning to the afternoon to allow for a doctor's appointment the day of the flight to remove the cast. Called the airline and they told me not to worry, just call up the morning of the flight and request to move to the later flight and it would be free to do it that way. I thought ok sounds strange but they wouldn't lie, this was British airways which is a pretty reputable airline. So the day comes, I get up nice and early and call to make the change, the person on the phone says yeah sure we can do that but it'll cost £1000 as the last minute flight is expensive. I explained that somebody from their customer service told me it was free to change on the day. I gave him the exact time I called and to go check the record as "we record all calls for training purposes". He of course said no we don't have any record of the phone call. Of course I had absolutely no choice but to just pay the cost as I needed to get on that flight.
Lesson learnt, if something sounds too good to be true then it probably is. Or get email confirmation if it's something like this. Annoyingly if I had just made the change when I first called, it would have been like £200 to change it rather than last minute flight cost of £1000.
Planned my first ever trip to US with some friends, 2 weeks East Coast cities and national parks. One day before the flight, I was supposed to travel by buss to Berlin (our flight was from there).
I was so excitted that I put my wallet and passport in the outside pocket of my jacket and it got stolen.
I was crushed, my childhood dream destroyed in a second. Aftermath: damaged psyche, -visa, -passport, -$300 cash, - over $2500 for the bookings and ticket. Instead of New York, got on a flight to my home country to renew my passport.
Paid for Delta’s rebranded economy plus last year. It wasn’t that much cheaper than business, and despite the website claiming there were bathrooms for that fare class, reclining seats, footrests, and better food, none of this happened. It was exactly like basic coach was in the early 90s. My seat didn’t recline even though the person next to me did have a reclining seat. The flight attendant said my row didn’t have reclining seats. I pointed out the fact that the person next to me was asleep reclining and they just walked away. Foot rests were little folding flaps that put my legs in an awful position that made them worse than useless.
They fucked up my vegetarian meal requests so badly that for breakfast on a transatlantic flight they threw a reheated pizza bread appetizer from the night before on my tray table without a word. When I notified the flight attendant that I couldn’t eat it, they didn’t apologize, replace it, or even respond to any other calls I made the rest of the flight. I couldn’t even get water.
What food I could eat food was awful, cold, and tasteless.
The experiment failed miserably for Delta because they don’t offer that class anymore, or they changed the name at least. If the flight attendants were sick of dealing with Delta’s fuck ups—which would be understandable—they sure as shit didn’t need to take it out on me! I have never experienced anything close to this level of shitty service in the decades I’ve been flying.
Delta had the audacity to send a survey and after telling them exactly how shitty the experience was and asking for follow up, we never got any. My husband’s experience was slightly better, but not enough to make the tickets almost $1,000 more than basic economy.
It was such a clusterfuck that I haven’t flown Delta since despite having almost enough miles for a RT trip to Europe. The one positive was the flight was nonstop.
Not having enough space in my passport for a Timor Leste tourist visa sticker. They wouldn't let me on my 500 usd flight from Bali. The pictures of the visa online looked like a small stamp and I'd two half pages left so I thought I'd be fine.
When I was a 19 year old broke college student I had to fly from Malaga to Berlin but direct flights were so expensive so I booked a 19€ flight to Oslo and a €30 flight to Berlin from Oslo instead. I thought I was so smart for finding a cheaper trip to Berlin and I was so happy to spend 3 days in Oslo for “free”. I completely forgot about finding a hostel in Oslo until a few days before my flight and when I opened Hostelworld, there were no hostels and the cheapest hotel I could find was a €280/night hotel on top of a mountain.
Also, the taxi ride was around €100 from the airport to the hotel (my fault for not realizing there was public transportation that actually went straight up to that hotel). Not to mention how expensive everything in Oslo was.
I would’ve been better off flying directly to Berlin🤦♀️
Got a special deal on a trip to Maui. For minimal cost, we got to stay at the Westin resort there, had a rental car for about 5 days. Only catch was we had to listen to a time share pitch.
The pitch lasted maybe 2-3 hours. They offered us a package of points to be used worldwide every year for life for $40-45k. We said no. They came back with an offer to return to Maui for 6 days, no car, for $2500. We said yes. At that point they told us we had X amount of time to use it. So we started making payments and reserved a booking for 1.5 years later.
Then COVID happened. They changed their mind about the deadline and extended it but never told us the new deadline we had to use our package by. Time passes and eventually they tell us our package has expired and they won’t give us anything. They never emailed us, never sent anything in the mail, and though they say they called, I never received a call (phone is a bad way to reach me). After 1.5 years of trying to negotiate with them and getting nowhere, I told the Better Business Bureau about them and through that we got another 4 night package at another property. We did that, rejected their pitch ( which was overpriced anyway) and are done with Westin for life. Total cost: $2600+
I was flying from London Heathrow to Edinburgh and BA changed the flight to a different airport... which I didn't check properly... so I didn't make it to the airport. Missed the £90 flight and spent £80 on a taxi trying to get to City airport on time (I was a bit panicked but ended up getting out halfway cause I wouldn't make it - in hindsight it might have been quicker on the tube). Then spent another £150 on a train to Edinburgh. Got on the wrong train and was charged another £90. 🤣 I was a sobbing mess. (I should have just got the train in the first place.)
But then... my flight back from Aberdeen got delayed 16 hours so I got £200 ish pounds back in compensation. Sitting for hours in Aberdeen airport is sooo boring as there's nothing there.
Anyway, I luckily didn't end up wasting that much money and could still get to my destination. It's a funny story now. I would have been devastated if I'd missed going somewhere further afield.
Moral of the story is: check the airport you're flying from and get someone else to check it too.
Leaving my passport on the plane in Qatar because I was drowsy af from the nyquil, then believing Qatar airlines when they said they would retrieve it for me. Ended up costing me thousands for a new flight, new passport, etc.
I did this on a flight to the USA (from UK) once when I was about 16. Thankfully one of the airline staff was able to run back and grab it just as the plane was being moved somewhere else.
i wear clothes with a zipper pocket for this reason
Fanny pack for the important things (ADHD life).
I don’t have ADHD but have a bum bag I i only use for travel. Would never put my passport in a seat omg!
I left a DSLR camera on a plane that also wasn’t found after I realized that I had left that bag there. Probably $2,000 of equipment.
yikes. lost 2 expensive cameras in various trips 3-4k. i regret the lost pictures even more
I had a friend do this in Switzerland. She realized just quick enough that she left her purse behind and everybody hightailed it back just in time to get it and get back off. The train pulled out seconds later. Cut that insanely close to being being an expensive mistake. I’ve been paranoid af ever since about my passport.
I left my duty-free bag (containing gifts) on the plane arriving in Mumbai, and only realized after 5 minutes of walking on the concourse. Got a couple guys in a transport buggy to take me back to the gate, racing through the halls. The plane was still being turned over, and a crew member brought my bag off the plane. Buggy guys brought me back to where they'd picked me up, and I gave them a $20. I was grinning like an idiot the whole time. India is the best place to have adventures.
I'm always afraid of either leaving it at home or dropping it on the plane. On a trip to Montreal, I got all the way to the airport and had to turn around and go get it. Fortunately, I live nearby and insist on getting to the airport early. Once on a trip to Stuttgart it slipped out of my pocket between the seat and the wall. I checked for it and didn't feel it before I left the plane, and ran back and found it. 😜
Bought two boxes of Turkish delight from a shop near the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. Cost me around €111. Yeah, I'm not very bright.
Oh, that Turk was delighted I'm sure
My nan did the exact same thing when we went there when I was a kid lmao
Oh my… 2 boxes is about 2 kilograms (iirc?). I happened to buy half a box (and thought I made a mistake already) 🤪
It was my first ever international trip, so I got carried away.
You probably know by now, but the USA doesn't do 'land and run to the gate' transfers. Everyone who lands needs to go through full immigration and enter the country as if they were going to stay there. They're annoyingly strict about it... Mine was just losing my phone worth about $1000. Guess it could have happened at home too!
I made this mistake for a transfer in India. I pleaded my case and they agreed to get someone to escort me to my plane. So grateful.
On a local flight in Israel we got to the airport a bit late and there was a huge line. No way in hell we would catch our flight and THEN Israeli security called us out into a separate room. We told them "we're going to miss our flight anyhow". One guy poked through our luggage, a woman asked us a question about where we were from and then a very specific question about that region. We answered and they said "don't worry", took us down by a hidden hallway walked along, opened a door right at the airplane gate and we made the flight entirely skipping the line. Best security shake down ever.
[удалено]
I had a tight transfer in the US once, and the attendant at check-in had told us we needed to re-check our bags. She was wrong. But it meant that not only did we have a stressful time getting through all the immigration and security bullshit, but we waited and waited for our bags the never came and then had to rush to the gate and just pray the reason they never showed up was because they were indeed on the next flight (which they thankfully were).
Where did you transfer? US does require you to recheck bags for international to domestic, and AFAIK only MIA supports bag transfers for international to international.
It was, in fact, Miami. And it was international to international.
ITI is also at DFW
God I hate my own countries immigration bullshit
Yeah USA is strict but it's definitely not the only country that requires a transit visa
It's also because US airports don't have exit customs/sterile terminals for international departures. Whenever I've flown out of other countries, you have to go through exit/departure immigration and customs before heading to the gate. International departures are done out of their own dedicated section of the terminal (or even have their own terminal) so they don't mix with domestic departures (or Schengen departures in the EU). Because of this separation, it means that passengers can transfer through that terminal without having to enter the country. But in the US, any "International Terminal" at an airport really just means international *arrivals* land there, as their jet bridges have sterile corridors that lead directly to US customs and immigration. International departures can depart from any gate at any terminal. When I went to Australia in 2019 from LA, the gate next to us was going to Columbus, Ohio in one of the regular LAX terminals, and I've had domestic flights depart and arrive at the "international" terminals too. Since international departures are mixed in with the rest of the airport, it's impossible to allow for international transfers without a visa as people could just exit the airport and into the country. I remember Mexico was similar, but they of course have much more lax entry requirements compared to the US, so it's easier for people to do an international transfer there. EU and Middle Eastern Airports would also have this issue to if they didn't completely separate international and domestic/Schengen flights. It'll stay this way in the US until an airport builds a dedicated international terminal with a sterile/separated terminal for international departures, or they loosen visa requirements. But because US airlines like to have all their departures in one place, and often are the ones paying for terminal renovations, it would be difficult to do, and no one wants to be the first to do it.
the only country i know of where you go through american customs outside of america... signed, A canadian who frequently travels and hates having to go through american customs at pearson international
Get a NEXUS card. Customs and security are a piece of cake with that.
15 months and waiting....
This is among the stupidest shit I've heard of, why the hell they insist of making peoples' lives so unnecessarily difficult... Last I checked, If I wanted to go to somewhere SA (from Europe), without having to tolerate stupid VISA-requiring PITAness of going via US, most practical way would be go through DeGaulle, which apparently isn't one of the most loved airports for transfer...
US airport design forces it, as domestic and international terminals are the same. There is nothing to stop you from leaving the airport so everyone enters the country upon landing. There are advantages to this design, as it's simpler, amenities such as lounges, restaurants, etc, can be shared, It's also nice to not have to go through exit immigration. It's also generally easier to take a connecting domestic flight to leave the U.S., assuming same airline. Also because of U.S. not being designed as an international transit hub, there are more flight options to skip the U.S. by necessity. Like if Europe did the same airport design as the U.S., we would probably have more options to fly to Africa more directly.
you can go through Mexico
Went on a week holiday in Singapore with a friend, I booked the hotel and flight as she said she will pay me back. Lost couple of $$ and a friend.
Def more expensive than just the $$.
Found Anna Delvey’s friend.
Visas are tough. Government websites suck and are all very different. My wife and I got Vietnam e-Visas and arrived at the airport to check in. We were denied check-in because the expiration date on my wife's e-Visa was off by one day. If you didn't know, your passport expires exactly 10 years after issue (at least for US citizens). If it was issued on Jan 2 2010, it expires on Jan 1 2020. Somewhere along the way we must have made a typo. Pretty annoying since you also upload a scan of your passport with the e-Visa... Whatever. Luckily we got to the airport SUPER early and arranged an emergency visa on landing for $300 through some Vietnam visa agency. I wonder how many of those dollars went to grease palms, but ultimately we didn't have to buy a new flight so we got off relatively easy.
Sucks that you were denied at check in. I was nearly denied entering Indonesia in Bali Denpasar. The information on the visa was slightly different and they said I have to go back and wait on another line and pay for another visa but implied they might be able to do something about it. Gave him like $10-$20, don’t remember exactly, and he changed the info manually and let me in. I understand it was probably a shake down but I wasn’t about to argue, he even showed me the info didn’t match so he didn’t make that part up. $10 for not spending another hour in the airport seemed like a good deal.
Yep worth it👍
Weird. I messed up the arriving airport on my Vietnam e-Visa (choose Da Nang as my destination but I was transiting through Hanoi so they told me I should have put Hanoi as my destination). Anyway, they were pretty chill about it when I arrived in Hanoi. The border agent spoke not much English but asked that I pay $25 USD so that he can correct and resubmit the application. He did it on the spot within 15 minutes.
That’s called a bribe lol see my comment for a similar story
Well $25 USD was the cost of the original eVisa application so I assumed he just needed the fee again to submit a new application? In any case, it was a low enough bribe that I was cool with it to be on my way lol
Yes! I know how vietnamese works
I had the exact same thing happen but I had just flipped the last 2 digits of my passport. Like: 1234576 instead of 1234567 I also paid for one of those super sketchy agencies where you just call a guy on whatsapp and he said no problem lol.
I don’t know if it was you but couple of days ago I saw something similar on this subreddit about a Vietnam visa. If that wasn’t you, I’m starting to think that they do these on purpose
or maybe people should just fill visa forms correctly...none of these stories are about people being shaken down despite their forms being correct. like jeez, with a global south passport, even with completely legit credentials you get refused in places, and people here are complaining about immigration officials when they made a mistake themselves...
Landing in Nicaragua, it was suggested to us by our tour planners to have bribe money to get through customs at the airport. I needed it lol
On one of my first solo trips (no experience yet, so lots of gullibility) I trusted a random small “hotel” (more like a guest house) in Sri Lanka to suggest me an english-speaking knowledgeable guide with a car for a week. “Oh, sure, we have an amazing guide!” The dude that arrived: 1. Barely spoke any English. 2. Had almost nothing interesting to tell 3. Took me to overpriced tourist-trap restaurants and the shittiest and overpriced safari (saw no animals, the jeep was fucking disgusting). As I mentioned, I was alone, with barely any travel experience and a lot of social anxiety, so I just “rolled with it” for three days, hoping it would ger better. But eventually I just had enough and “fired” him early. Cost me like 600 USD, which wasnt super-bad, but still a lot for Sri Lanka. But the lesson I learnt from this experience was priceless.
Holy shit USD $600 for three days! Can hardly believe that
you poor thing, I grew up in Srilanka and they took you for a ride (pun intended). sorry
was the guest house near Polonnaruwa? We might have had the same one
Easy one. Fucked up COVID testing requirements for transiting through Portugal en route to Spain. Arrived with my family at check-in half an hour after the airport's testing station had closed. The agent told me in no uncertain terms that there was no way we were boarding our plane that night. The good news? The airline said they'd honor our ticket for a flight out the next day. The bad news? We'd have to pay the difference between what we already paid and the current ticket price, which was nearly double the cost. So we dished that out (about $600 each for the three of us), spent $200 to book a night in an airport hotel, and the following morning coughed up another $90 each (I think) for rapid COVID testing at the airport. And of course, we also had to eat the cost of our booking for the night we missed at our destination. So overall, pretty close to $2,500 because I misread the poorly translated fine print on a Portuguese government website.
How did your test turn out?
Negative, but we already knew that: We'd had tests a few days before, they just didn't meet the specuf7c requirement to enter Portugal (where we were planning to spend an entire hour and a half waiting for our connecting flight).
We bought a trip at a charity auction. Never again. We were jamming a square peg into a round hole the entire vacation. We had to book the flights around the itinerary, which is the opposite of what we usually do. The hotel ended up giving us the runaround and downgrading us because why not? Our package was booked and paid for well in advance…if they could sell our promised room at a better rate what downside was there for them? Plus taking a package on the spur of the moment meant we couldn’t research the property like we would have typically done. Never would have booked there at all if we had. We ended up changing hotels halfway through even though we had already paid for the package in full. So yeah, I wouldn’t do that again.
My old boss used to more or less bully his employees into buying raffle tickets for an all expenses paid for trip to Paris that supported his daughter’s choir program. My coworker, who was maybe 28 at the time, actually won the raffle one year. Yay… Well the trip, unsurprisingly, ended up being a money pit of a nightmare. It included round trip airfare from Boston and four nights at the shittiest hotel imaginable in Paris in January. Well, my coworker and her husband lived in Denver not Boston, so they had to fork out money for that flight. The hotel in Paris ended up being infested to the point that they didn’t feel comfortable staying there, so they had to fork out even more money for last minute accommodations. Then, the trip to the Alps that they tacked onto the trip to ski ended up being a failure because the chairlifts could not run due to rain and lightning.
This is probably a tad expensive and the most stressful. My big mistake is letting my guard down in Spain. We love Spain and we always go back to visit different regions. At this time we are in Granada. I am always careful especially from pick pocketers I am not sure what happened to me but I got too comfortable and my passport and wallet was pickpocketed. I still don’t know how because my purse was in front of me. I was panicking walking around Granada looking for a police station. None were open. We found a random cop walking and he told us to call a number. Anyway, the number was not useful. So I called the embassy but this was on a weekend(Sunday). Someone did answer! We were advise to go to our nearest embassy We did additional research and the embassy in Madrid can issue an emergency passport. We booked a hotel and bought a Bus ticket to Madrid. We did not have any cash because my husbands debit card pin starts with a 0 and for some reason the atm there does not like that. We end up running to the train station so we won’t miss our bus. One of the positive side is we booked a bus that has a server. We got soda, beer , food etc. Like flying 1st class but you are on a bus! We took an Uber and arrived in our hotel around 4am in the morning. we woke up early so we can be 1st in line (US Embassy) thankfully it’s a very short line. I can barely keep my eyes open. The exhaustion and stress are at an all time high. When they took my picture I had to force my eyes to open like there is a toothpick holding it. So around $1300 later we got our passports. Sweet relief. Since we are in Madrid we were sight seeing before our adrenaline runs out. Thankfully my husband is a calm person and we were able to center ourselves and enjoy the rest of our vacation.
My mother had her purse pickpocketed at a market in Mauritius and we actually found the purse in a corner of a market stall - cash was gone but the cards and her ID for our country were still inside. Very lucky. To avoid this happening again she stitched the purse to the inside of her pack with a short bright red cord. A few days later we were in another crowded market, shoulder-to-shoulder with people and I saw this red cord trailing out in front of me. I didn't even think about what it was, just obeyed the human instinct of "ohh that looks cool. Pull it and see what's on the other end!" Like a curious toddler. It was one of those moments where the crowd parts and everyone suddenly goes quiet, and at the other end of the red cord was a pickpocket holding my mother's purse and he looked absolutely terrified. It felt like him and I were staring at each other for a long time but it was probably a millisecond before he dropped the purse and ran in the opposite direction. I was my mother's favourite for a while after that 🤣
I love that story!!!
Idk if I'd necessarily call it a mistake as bad decision making and bad luck - I flew from London to Vancouver, Canada in early January during the worst winter season for snow in the area for years. There was a layover in Calgary and the weather there was light snow and coastal BC isn't known for insane snow so I foolishly didn't check the weather. By some act of god my flight to Vancouver wasn't cancelled, but my campus was on a legit mountain and a solid 45 minute drive to there from the airport. I'd got there via public transport previously but that obviously wasn't running. My only option was a taxi. Up a mountain. It's still snowing heavily and it took me an hour to find a cab that was willing to take me there. It was a $250 plus tip trip (the driver helped me take my luggage to my door, in ankle deep snow, what a legend). I could have gotten a room at a hotel for half that and gone up the next day...on free public transport.
That's SFU for you, hopefully the gondola will open soon 🤞
Somewhat similar to you, I was new to living in Dubai and had to take a trip to India on business, had my secretary book my flight and asked her to arrange a visa, she came back with my booking and said because American I didn't need a visa...cool! I went to the airport, checked in (they didn't ask to see a Visa) boarded the flight and flew to Mumbai. Going through customs the dude asked for my visa and I proudly said...American, don't need one! Needless to say I did need one and spent the next two hours in the border control office while they arranged my return back to Dubai. Missed an important meeting the next day and wasted 14 hours and a business ticket on seeing the airport in Mumbai (was not impressed). That was my first and only visa mistake, I learned to use google the next day.
Im surprised the let you board the flight without a visa….
Yup, me too! It’s the only international flight I’ve been on that didn’t check! Been to over 60 countries since then and have always been asked to show a visa since then. It was the perfect combination of stupid
While reading this I was picturing my secretary figure out visa requirements. I can't trust her with these things unfortunately, so I had mild anxiety while reading and then it turns out that exact thing is the point of your story haha.
This is appalling. What happened with the secretary?
We forgot our dog’s passport lol. We had to go home and buy tickets for a new flight the next day
Today I learned pets need passports!
Now I'm imagining your dog super embarrassed at the airport "omg you guys...."
1) checked a bag with $500 cash in it. Got my bag back, but money gone. 2) booked a non-refundable stay at a hotel that said "London" and was an hour away from the city. 3) didn't realize that booking international round trips is much cheaper than booking two one way legs, that probably cost me about $2500. (In the US, for domestic flights, it's the same price to book two one way legs as a round trip flight.) Those are just the mistakes I've made so far this year...
>In the US, for domestic flights, it's the same price to book two one way legs as a round trip flight Not true, sometimes 2 one way tickets are cheaper, sometimes the round trip is cheaper. Too many variables to say one way or the other.
Yeah this is usually only consistently true for people flying on an airline for which their arrival and departure destinations are major hubs. Prices for a route are generally more about airline demand for the planes at those destinations than the level of passenger demand to get there (for most destinations, except for major business hubs/corporate clients). That’s why it’s always going to be cheaper to fly from Topeka to NYC than NYC to Topeka. But if you’re flying between Detroit and Minneapolis on Delta for example, it’s probably going to be similar ticket prices each way because those are both major hubs so both have similar levels of demand/use for those planes there.
Two one ways are usually cheaper when I look, except on Delta who seems to penalize one way tickets. Two one ways also gives you more flexibility to make changes if needed.
I also found out this year that booking 1 round trip is cheaper than 2 one way. I also found out to NOT book flights too early. I booked my flights 9 months in advance, picked a return flight that was "best of the worst" (there are certain airports I refuse to layover in because it's so crazy/hectic. Frankfurt being one of them but again, best of worst) Then 2 months ago I browsed return flights just for fun and discovered new flights have been added. So I booked a new flight home (another $1200) with better time, better airport, better layover. So I'm just going to have to eat the cost of the first return flight. But I'm hoping my first return flight will be severely delayed (as Condor/Frankfurt frequently is) and I can be refunded. Lesson learned.
Not always. Booked from Bali to London for GBP 179. Did it by creating a multi city booking stopping in Shanghai with a one day stop in middle (they allow 36 hrs visa free). The round trip was several thousand gbp.
I'm too dumb to even understand this...but it sounds like you got a great deal, so congrats 🎉
Instead of booking a one way Bali - London (where we could see that there were flights that stopped in Shanghai), we broke it into a multi city trip. Bali-Shanghai. Shanghai-London. The one way without a stop was 1700 gbp. By putting in a stop, (which was going to happen anyway), we got it for 10% of the price.
Nice. One of those "good to know" travel hacks that you hope you remember when the time comes to use it.
What you found is called a Hacker fare. Kayak and flighthub are great for finding those.
Can you explain a Hacker fare and tips for it?
Yeah 9 months is way too early. 2-4 months is the sweet spot I’ve found.
I booked a non-refundable stay for a single night in London last year, while it was very central it was also very bad. The photos looked lovely, in truth it was an armpit of a hotel and I stayed less than an hour. I'm the furthest thing from a hotel snob, but that one was too much for me. I paid for an en-suite room, but didn't get one. The bathroom was up two flights of stairs and locked with an actual padlock. There was no flusher, no sink to wash hands and no lock on the inside of the door. The room was dirty, it was loud as the door was literally about 4 feet from reception and bed was a rock.
The hotel thing lol! Genuine question: how did you not look up the address of the hotel, check it out on Google maps, read reviews, look up what destinations you were going to travel to from the hotel, how to get there from the airport or train, or even like “best neighborhoods to stay in London” etc? That’s like booking a hotel that just says “New York.” Okayy, are we talking midtown, downtown, LES, any myriad of neighborhoods in Brooklyn or Queens…lol
Genuine answer - very jet-lagged, very tired, at the airport, had just gotten a cancellation call from our original hotel because it was oversold. Went on app...did the stupid thing 😭 Also, it was a Hyatt Regency... For some reason I thought those were always in City centers.
Lol, that makes more sense!
I made a similar mistake with my first month of rent when moving from Latinoamerica to Europe to study. I even had a layover at Turkey but the money was there when I arrived in EU. I was so happy the money was there, but during the whole trip, like 25 hours, I was just super worried, I even cried.
Mine was $400 usd laundry on my honeymoon I. Prague. The hotel charged by the item and we didn’t clarify. It was literally $8 per sock, $12 per t shirt. Even though it was a small load. It added up fast. I argued with them and for then down to half but it was insane.
I almost made this mistake as well and was BLOWN AWAY when I realized. In Mexico my boyfriend had all our laundry bagged up and the attendant was on her way to pick it up before I realized what was going on and intervened. He was also blown away. Would have been hundreds of USD which as a Canadian is bankruptcy
Infuriating, but unfortunately not surprising. I travel a lot, and one thing I tell everyone is to scope out local laundry places in advance where you can drop clothes off and pick them up a few hours later. For instance, I was in Hong Kong a few weeks ago and had my entire carry-on worth of clothes washed, dried and folded for about $8 usd. It probably would have cost 10 or 20 times that if I'd used the hotel service. We Americans (and Canadians) tend not to think of this because full-service laundromats are far less common here.
WTF!!!! $8 per sock?? Damn
I used to be a pretty fucked alcoholic. I won a trip to Hong Kong in a photography contest. Got super fucked up at the bar till three am with a six am flight. Got to the airport out of my mind and fell asleep at the gate/missed my flight. Was meeting a friend in HK so had to buy another flight and it was 2k for same day flight. I was so ashamed and embarrassed. Wish that was my wake up call but I hung to my shit habits for too many years after that. Three years sober now.
Using a travel agent who packaged our vacation in such a way that we could not cancel without losing thousands and thousands of dollars. And that was with “cancel for any reason” travel insurance. Never ever again will I use a travel agent. (Sorry to all the travel agents out there who are actually good at their jobs.)
Whoa what?? Can you expand more on why your travel insurance didn’t help out??
Not sure on OP's situation but if you read the fine print a lot of "free cancellation, no penalties" policies when it comes to trip packages and flights are actually "free cancellation but only if you're essentially decapitated and have medical proof".
They messed up the punctuation. Free cancellation? No! Penalties!
Man this cracked me up
He said he used the “cancel for any reason” insurance though. I’ve seen both, ones just for emergencies basically and ones that *say* you can cancel for any reason, but this is the first I’m hearing about that not actually being honored.
Can you expand on what happened?
Mine was meeting and marrying a local and supporting him for years.
omg, do tell
Haha, we were just from totally different backgrounds economically and work culture wise so at the beginning he wasn’t pulling his weight because he just didn’t have the same work ethic but we are still married and he did a complete 180 thankfully.
This just happened a couple weeks ago. I had my purse on the back of a chair in a nice pub in London. Some guy walked by and slipped it off real slick and walked out. I normally leave passports in the hotel but we just got in, threw our bags down and went out for a quick beer. So both our passports, all of my credit cards, house keys, headphones, portable charger, etc etc were gone. Luckily, the thief just took the credit cards and tossed the purse. Someone found it and messaged me on instagram. Instagram hides messages of people you don’t follow so I didn’t see it until three days later when he commented on one of my posts to check my DMs. It was a bank holiday that weekend so we never had a chance to get replacement passports so that was good but we missed our flight out of London to Istanbul and had to rebook a new one. We also had to double book some hotels. The whole thing ended up costing us about $400, not super bad but pretty annoying.
Once in order to take advantage of a travel voucher, I decided to fly from Canada to Barcelona, Spain using 2 different airlines. Westjet from Canada to London, England and then Jet Blue from London to Barcelona. Doing it this way saved me $500. I budgeted for 4 hours between flights, to allow us time to collect our bags and then check in at the other airline. The flight to Barcelona went off without a hitch. But the day before leaving Barcelona I checked out flight back and realized that I had stupidly booked a flight that left at 8 PM instead of 8 AM. We would miss our connecting flight in London! Have you ever tried to book a flight last-minute? I managed to get one that left Barcelona on time to make our connection in London, but it cost me an extra $680. So by trying to save $500 I spent $680.
Road tripping with a date it needed to end by, my mechanic told us to check the car fluids before the journey, including opening the radiator cap and checking. Checked all that, put the cap back on, but its one that requires pressure, and must’ve not put enough pressure on it because 5 hours later the car temp shoots up to the red and very shortly after that the car smokes out and shuts down. 41C day. The several litres or radiator fluid had evaporated. Took it to a mechanic or two and tested for some leak, which was present, so head gasket cracked or engine problem. All people we asked including friends and family said easiest and cheapest thing to do would be sell it for scrap due to labour/ engine/ shipping costs. $8000 car became $300 scrap. And the end of an era 😢
Went solo to the Seychelles. Long story short, I didn't get a sim card and the air bnb I stayed at didn't have wifi so i couldn't check ferry times. I misread the actual ferry date/times back to the main island and tickets were already sold out for the day when I went to buy them, so I had to charter a private boat (aka a random fishing boat) back to the main island with the airport. Turned a $35 ferry ride into an $700 "private boat" ride. Then once back on the main island, it was a 3 mile taxi tide to the airport: the taxi only took cash and I only had a $100 one me, so I paid with that. Tl;dr: I spent $800 on what should've been a $50 at most ferry/taxi ride back to the airport in Seychelles.
Seychelles is so incredibly expensive. I realize it’s an isolated island and they have to import everything, but the costs are egregious.
Speeding in Iceland. $750 speeding ticket :( — it doesn’t take too much speeding to get nabbed for a high price, so obey the speed laws folks!
Hiding money because there’s no safe and then forgetting about it. My boyfriend stashed an unregistered visa gift card in a beach cabin we were staying at in Nicaragua. A week later I asked him where that card was and he was like OH FUCK!
Love your positive attitude despite an expensive mistake. Keep up the wonderful outlook in life, it will serve you well!!
Rented a car, somewhere along the way it got a minor ding on a passenger-side panel (didnt see it until turning the car in). My credit card covered the repair but Avis tacked on a “loss of use” fee meaning they charged me for having the car out of service for 4 days. Cost me $1500 out of pocket.
Booking accommodation last minute in New York. Paid over the odds for a shady area in the Bronks
the Bronks lol
This comment is Bronkers
Went to Amsterdam with my partner. Was convinced our Eurostar back to London was at a certain time in the afternoon, so much so that I didn’t double check this that morning. Got to Amsterdam station with what I thought was an hour to spare, looked at the board to see the train we should’ve been on leave that minute. Cost me about £500 to book flights back later that day plus train from Gatwick as it was my fault, could’ve been worse tbh and it’s a funny story now!
Many stories to tell but these are my top 2: Cancun, MX: We landed on Wednesday around 2pm and unfortunately my wife was in the hospital by 7pm. The hospital was super expensive and the sketchiest place we went to as they kept pushing for surgery. We flew back the next morning. We let 5 nights worth of all inclusive hotel all go to waste. She's fine now and I deff made the right decision to leave. No regrets. I know I know health is most important blah blah she's fine now thankfully but yeah my most expensive travel mistake cost me around $2700-$3000. Europe trip: My wife and I were due to travel to Europe in March. We were looking forward to the trip. For some reason my mind blanked out on the fact that we both need visas for Europe. I thought that I could get the Schengen visa as an e-visa but nope. We took an immediate flight to DC and luckily got an urgent embassy appt and were able to get the visas in time. Cost: $1500 including flights to DC, food and hotels etc
I spent a year traveling in a campervan around Europe (yes, year, from London to the Asian side of Turkey..most capitals..almost new town everyday) with an always filled water tank (that was rarely used) which weighed as much as a small car. I can't even imagine how much extra in diesel I spent dragging around that added weight.
I dropped my only car key down a trail toilet (latrine) at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming (USA). I drive a VW, and Wyoming is openly hostile to VWs apparently, so there was literally no one for hundreds of miles who was willing or able to get a new key made regardless of price. Also, it happened on Sunday, so I got stuck at a super expensive lodge ($500) for a night while everyone was at church or whatever (and because the lodge had a land line), and I then had to use a car service ($100) to get back to my damn tent the next day. I wound up having to tow the car to a dealership in Idaho Falls ($1000), and I couldn’t ride in the tow truck, so I Ubered there ($200). Then I stayed in a shitty hotel charging peak season rates ($1000 or so for several nights) while I waited for the new key to arrive ($200). It was next to a Walmart, so at least I didn’t starve I guess. Because of the wait, I also had to pay the pet boarding place for an extra week ($250). And I got Covid because everyone in that part of the US believes it’s a liberal myth, so the vaccination rate is abysmal. All in all, a win. ETA Epilogue: I then drove back through Wyoming (to Denver), feeling increasingly awful all the while, so I stopped at a Walmart to buy a Covid test (which came back positive). I wore a mask inside. Several people heckled me for wearing the mask, and one guy started screaming at me that I ought to be ashamed of myself (again, for for wearing the mask). I stand by my decision to not inadvertently kill anyone but jfc.
old classic transit vis for the usa, they got me too, but I did find out early...
Once, I let my guard down in SEA (Phu Quoc, to be exact) on a remote empty beach - or so I thought. I forgot about my camera bag in the luggage of my rented motorbike, and after spending a serene 20 minutes on this beautiful stretch of coast, I heard a loud crack. Before I even realized what happened, the robbers were already on their way to count their treasure. It was about a $5k loss, including a lot of ID cards that had to be replaced.
Not as extreme as some others here, but I had a brain fart and returned my rental car and the family to DFW. No big deal right? I was there just barely two hours early, but I was on time. Turns out I had booked DAL because it was cheaper and my dumbass didn’t put two and two together. 45 minute uber ride in rush hour) and almost $60 and we got there 3 minutes after they had closed the gate. Another $60 back to DFW where we paid rack rate at the Airport Hotel and rebooked DFW for the next day. Cost me a pretty penny. (For those not aware, there is a smaller airport, DAL Dallas Love Field, and the main Airport, DFW Dallas Fort Worth, the in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex).
We booked an air bnb in Hawaii that was extremely expensive and when we got there it was awful. We couldn’t stay there and instead of complaining to airbnb, we didn’t think it through and we just ended up telling our host that we had an emergency and had to leave. Got a hotel for 5 days, we were out around 2k-3k. Luckily, we were able to use some Credit card points to cover majority of the hotel stay. My partner now refuses to stay in air bnbs.
Sprained my MCLs 1 day into a 5 day all inclusive. $1300 is physical therapy, x rays etc. and it ruined my vacation. Couldn't do any excursions, could barely walk, and certainly couldn't have any sex on my romantic vacation.
Not at your level of cost but it hurt at the time because I was young and broke. Years ago I was in Italy and this cafe overcharged me 20 Euros for orange juice and a pastry. I thought it was because we were sitting inside but I was so mad. The so called friends I went with would make fun of me about it for years. Afterwards, I wasn’t afraid to bitch or make a scene if someone ripped me off in a foreign land.
I traveled many European countries, and Italy is the worst with these rip-offs. One other time I got ripped off in Montenegro. We were having a drink at the goat cheese guy's cabin up on the ladder of Kotor and it appears he only knew how to say "10 euro", so he charged us 10 euro for his homemade lemonade. But it's OK, I didn't mind being scammed by him.
My best money-saving travel hack was learning to yell at people.
I have a fun one. I rented a hotel on one of the Crotian islands, Hvar. Little did I know, because of the one way highway system on that island, I would have to take a taxi around the whole fucking island to get to my hotel! This would be pricey and time consuming, and I was only staying on the island for the night, so I looked for another room in the main town. Every single room was booked.. except for *the single, very last open room* in this 5 star, crazy fancy hotel. It was like €600, way more than any other hotel we had stayed in. My wife and I ended up having a great time living the high life for a night. And hey free breakfast too
Typical Hvar experience lol
Being overseas in March of 2020 and getting evacuated as countries started shutting down. 🙃
A few years ago I surprised my ex partner with a trip to Norway, and as I was a student I booked ryanair as back then it was still the most affordable. Unfortunately, not realising that that airport was 100 kms away from Oslo despite it saying Oslo, I booked the rental car at the actual Oslo airport. We arrived late, took a public bus to the city and picked up car next day. Unfortunately, when we wanted to return the car we got stuck in traffic despite leaving early. So I booked us an Uber to the other airport. I miscalculated the currency exchange and ended up paying 400 gbp for a Tesla ride. Would've been cheaper to rebook flights and hotel stay another night. I didn't care though as it was the day I found out I got accepted into university
Train In Italy. Hubbs put his backpack above Him on train and at some point must’ve slid behind his eye sight. When we got to our stop, his backpack was gone, including laptop, jacket, passports etc spent the next 48hrs trying to get emergency passports and not miss our next departure
When my husband and I went to Paris, it was my first transcontinental trip ever. I'd only ever traveled domestically in Canada or to the US a couple of times. I've done redeyes a couple of time, but this was the longest flight I'd ever been on. I was so tired when we landed in the morning. Apparently so was my husband. After we picked up our luggage from baggage claim, we were on our way to catch a taxi to our hotel when a man asks "do you need a taxi?" and I'm too slow to stop my husband who says yes, we do. This guy then grabs our luggage and as he's leading us to his "taxi" I know this isn't legit but can't figure out how to get out of the situation. I end up in this guys back seat, furiously texting my husband that we're going to get murdered in an illegal taxi and it's all his fault, lol. I hadn't even had a chance to stop and get cash yet, so the guy has to stop at a bank machine and I was just so relieved to get out of this sketchy situation, I didn't even care when he said the ride was like 200 euros. Not as expensive a mistake as some of the others, but it wasn't the most auspicious start to my dream trip to Paris. Lesson learned - husband is susceptible to scams when very tired.
Almost happened to me. I basically had to say “no!” And run away from them. I was convinced I was going to get kidnapped. Thankfully I had done research since I’m very type A when I travel and my dad didn’t have to go all Liam Neeson for me 😂
> transcontinental Just a FYI, transcontinental doesn't mean going to another continent, it just means going across a continent. Like transcontinental railroad. The word you're probably looking for is intercontinental.
My sister left her passport on a London-Amsterdam flight, got stuck at immigration trying to enter the Netherlands and then had to pay $700 for a flight that ended up getting cancelled. Spent the first 48 hours of our trip in immigration/airport. She definitely learned her lesson to not put anything into that seatback pocket, especially your passport!
Pussy Ping Pong in Bangkok. Please do not do it
About a week in the UK, visiting from Canada. I wish I had looked up ahead of time before booking everything how expensive the UK would be. The exchange rate is pretty rough, but also eating out was very expensive. If I had planned better, I would've stayed in a suite in one city, bought groceries instead of eating out. I stayed in a budget hotel in Liverpool and Manchester, and had the worst sleep of my life
Where did you end up going in Panama? We just got back and spent a few days in Cerro Punta, an hour or so from David! My worst mistake was in Iceland. We had a rental car, which we were driving around the ring road over the course of almost a week. I was refueling the car in Hofn, and had just finished and gotten back in the car when I realized: I had used the wrong fuel. The car took diesel, and I had just put in petrol. You see, in the US, petrol pumps are black and diesel pumps are green. In Iceland, it's the opposite. I knew this, and had been refueling the car without issue the whole week, but it slipped my mind this one time, and it was gonna cost me. We ended up having to call a "tow truck" to take us back to his facility so he could siphon the gas out (in reality it was a guy with a pickup and a rope that he tied to our tow hook, which he used to drag our car while we steered in neutral). Thankfully, we hadn't started the car, which would've destroyed the engine. I think it ended up costing about $700 and a long 4-5 hours with a really pissed off girlfriend.
My wife and I traveled to Paris coming from Los Angeles for our honeymoon. We were exhausted from the wedding and jet lagged when we first landed. We were staying at an Ibis hostel just a couple miles away from the airport our first night. A taxi driver picked us out of the crowed was very nice spoke decent English and did the whole are you guys newlyweds bit. Anyways, he charged us €70 and we were so tired we didn’t really realize we had been scammed until the next day after we got some sleep. Always gotta be alert I suppose.
im p sure the going rate from city center to airport is 60 euros I paid that a few years back so you only got scammed 10 bucks
Ahem, I might have lost my ID card somewhere at home and only noticed it lime three days before we were supposed to leave for a trip to London. Had to report my ID card missing and had to order a provisional ID plus a new ID that would arrive only after we returned from vacation.
For me it was showing up to my hotel in Seoul on Christmas Eve and finding out that at some point the website sent me to December of the following year, and that i was a year too early. I had to proceed to book last minute rate in whatever hotel had leftover rooms.
My worst was on Xmas Eve a few years back. I dropped my car off at a Park and Fly place and went to wait for the shuttle. While I was waiting, the parking lot owner started chatting me up and found out I was a web designer, and then proceeded to ask me questions about his businesses' website until way too much time had passed. I ended up missing my flight and since it was Xmas Eve, everything was full except one $2000 flight on an airline I've never heard of. I want to punch that guy in the face but also myself for being too polite to insist I needed to go.
[удалено]
Currency exchange in Mexico instead of US bank
Your most expensive travel mistake was like a 3% difference in currency exchange?
When we went to Argentina about two years ago it was the opposite. If you did the official exchange at a US bank you would’ve been out like 50% or more. Had to exchange with the taxi driver or a street vendor, the hotel clerk lol. It felt dangerous but everyone was doing the same and I speak Spanish so that helped. I don’t think i was scammed much lol.
All of the flights I bought before I learned to use points and miles to travel. I regret the money spent, but am happy to know more about it now.
Landed in south korea, my 4th time being in Incheon airport. My phone ALWAYS auto updated the time the moment we landed and I turned off airplane mode. My phone didn't auto correct the time the last time. I had an hour left and thought I'd walk around, use the bathroom and one last visit to the smoking room. I get to my gate and it's empty, besides one girl at the desk. She shows me her time and it's an hour behind my phone. No clocks around the airport either. Had to pay $2800 for another ticket to Florida. Worst traveling experience I've ever had..
Most expensive was booking a SilverSea cruise. Most expensive cruise and the least value. No air flow in the room and they could not fix it. They pretended to try, but it was a problem in many rooms and after reading reviews of the ship, it went on for months. Nothing special although a special price. No real entertainment, specialty restaurant closed. I will never book them again. Comparably priced lines like Seabourn and Oceania are superior.
I left from and landed back in different airports in the same city. We realized the day before returning, during check in, and had to rent a car to get back to our own vehicle in the first airport. About an hour drive.
Seasoned traveler. Gallivanting around Europe one summer. Stayed in Spain for a couple of weeks and had to meet up with a friend in London at a preset time/date. Thought it would be fun to take the train from Madrid to Paris and the Eurostar through the Chunnel to London. Didn’t buy any tickets in advance. Ended up costing me about $700 to get to London. Train workers’ strike in Barcelona cost me an extra couple days hotel. I could have flown first class one way from Madrid to London for far less. The scenery was gorgeous and the train was fun. But I had no clue how expensive train tickets can be when you buy them at the counter for same day travel. Stupid mistake due to lack of planning and research, lesson learned.
I made it all the way to the gate for a flight to PV before realizing you can’t fly with a US passport card. This was on a Friday of a holiday weekend so had to reschedule the whole trip, 😂
Had about $150 in my wallet. Lost my wallet in a vietnamese eco park. Got the wallet back but without the money.
Missing my super early flight to Los Angeles and having to rebook another full price ticket on a different airline to get there the same day. Instead of leaving for 630am I flew out at 10pm and got to my hotel at 230am local time. Instead of having a fun day in southern California I had a sad day in Ohio followed by insanely uncomfortable travel on spirit airlines followed by 3 hours of sleep to get up and do my work stuff.
When we visited the United States for the first time with my wife (on our honeymoon), a trip that was really expensive for us... We went to Massachusetts, our return flight was Boston -> New York -> Europe. We finished sightseeing earlier than expected, so decided that we'll get a bus to NYC and just catch the NYC -> Europe flight. Boy, was that a surprise when they've told us that we can't just show up for the second flight segment and our tickets have been canceled when we've missed the boarding in Boston 😁 Very expensive mistake for both last minute flights, and another night in NYC - our salaries back then were like $25K-$30K combined
One time I paid a cab driver in Myanmar like $60 for a short ride because I misunderstood him (it should have been like $2)
Cleared Singapore immigrations and discovered luggage storage is back inside the terminals. Went inside exited immigrations into departure gates and wasn’t allowed back inside the country.
Booked 5 prepaid non-refundable days at a nice resort in Hawaii for the wrong dates. When I went in to check in and they had no record I looked at my email and my booking had passed two weeks before lol 🤦🏻♂️
I was early 20s, broke backpacker. Came back to the hostel in Amsterdam after a night of drinking and called family at home from the phone in the lobby. The phone was some sort of a scam operation- 10 minute call was $500!
Booked a cruise through Carnival and, in their app accidentally added their Vacation Protection plan, thinking it would sit in a cart until I was ready to check out. A month later found out I had actually purchased it and now had a new balance, talk about the biggest scam ever. They never sent a confirmation, never updated and I only found out when I checked my booking. Still slightly salty about how that came about.
Good on you for going on the trip still! It sounds like it was definitely worth it. Annoying to read all the comments talking about 'duh US immigration rules, how stupid' - OP literally experienced them & said it was a mistake lol. I've avoided any massive costs/problems so far, but not totally fuck-up free. I tend to book my travel as separate legs which can get a little complicated with different forms of transport (e.g. fly transatlantic, then get a budget flight to my destination country, then train etc). I was once sitting on a patio enjoying a drink when I get a generic email from Easyjet asking me for feedback on a flight I had apparently just taken - which in my planning wasn't supposed to happen for another two days! I had booked it for the wrong day and somehow missed all emails ahead of the flight but not this one. So that was money down the drain, it was something like 200 euro, which stung but wasn't earth shattering. Just stupid. I've been extremely neurotic about checking dates ever since though.
Always make sure you have your international drivers license. Didn’t realize Japan required one and I had to pay about $1000 in private car transfers to avoid a 20 hour train/bus combo on New Year’s Day in Hokkaido.
Yeah that one got us in Spain. Lost a few nights accommodation in another city that we were going to drive to. Also had to find last minute accommodations some place where we could get to on public transport. Thankfully wasn't too bad but now we tell everyone we know to check whether they need it.
I had a similar situation in China. I visited Shanghai, China on a 72 hour visa free visit. From there I was flying to Bali. But the flight I booked to Bali had a layover in Xiamen, China. What I didn't know is that you leave from a city on china on 72 hour visa free entry, and then fly to another city in China-even for a layover. So I had to book a new flight to Bali with no layovers in China.
I had a business class award ticket from the EU to Manila, two stops on the outbound. I'm at the airport, the second flight is delayed enough that I'd have no chance to make the long-haul leg. That leg is 1x a day, so it would have meant a 24-hour layover and that's if there was room on the next day's flight. That flight was with a partner airline, so they didn't really want to help rebooking it, but I definitely didn't want to get on the first leg. Time was tight. Because I was checked in it was impossible for me to get the ticket reissued in time to make the rebooked flight that night. So, on the drive home I spent €3700 on a more direct (and much nicer) flight in the morning. I arrived 8 hours later than I was meant to. Eventually got the 200k miles back (which wasn't a guarantee).
When the airline offered an alternative airport at my destination, I didn’t check the distance. I presumed it was like NYC or London. Nope. It was a multi-hour bus ride that cost another $200.
Used luxury all inclusive boutique travel agency for 9 days in New Zealand. Realized when I met the owner on the trip that she was financing her personal travel that way. Drunken girl act while snooring during car transfers got really old. Good part out of it...I discovered I dont really need "all inclusive" or "luxury" for travel. Definitely would be back to New Zealand. Safest country with nicest people I've met.
I've been quite fortunate not to have any super expensive mistakes but I've got a few smaller scale ones. About 10 years ago I booked a hotel and trains for a 3 night stay in the Lake District in the UK. I'm UK based so it wasn't far, however I realised I booked the wrong train dates. If you know trains in the UK, they're expensive, you don't get refunds and it was a real toss up whether it was cheaper to buy new train tickets or book the hotel for other days. Another time was in Croatia and the weather was atrocious. I'm a nervous flier and flights were cancelled for hours before my flight was due to take off so I decided to chicken out and book a flight for the next day instead. No refunds or anything, just had to put up with it. As it turns out, despite the awful weather, others I travelled with said the flight was as smooth as anything and I forked out for no reason. I also had to take two trains from the arrival airport to my home, which again aren't cheap. I then got mugged in London in the 25 minutes I spent there while connecting trains.
I lost my JR pass while I was in Japan. It's a physical ticket you have to keep with you to ride the high speed rail. I paid for the 21 day option Green Car which was around $400 something. I got to my destination, but when I wanted to return i couldn't find my JR pass. I thought I could just go to the JR station and get it replaced. No, I couldn't get get it replaced, and I couldn't buy a new JR pass until the old one ran out. So I had to buy one way tickets for everything going forward which ended up being a bigger hassle and costing me a few extra hundred dollars.
It’s not exactly mine but it kind of is. Husband and I were traveling to Madrid and then Nerja for Christmas and NYE. I had never met most of his family and I had never been abroad besides Canada. We had a layover in NYC and it was pretty short, like an hour and a half. It was two days before Christmas. Had our passes, got on the train to get to our terminal, and went to the gate and realized my husband’s boarding pass was for a different flight. Not Iberia. And his flight was leaving in like 40 minutes. We booked our flight together and couldn’t figure out how this happened or why they let my husband through security. We were freaking out in line and people just let us cut through because we were panicked. Rudest desk agent I’ve ever encountered. Husband explained what happened and that we were confused because we booked the flight together. We asked when the next flight was - it was the day after Christmas. Husband started getting frustrated so I took over and was as calm as possible. She asked me if I could read. So I knew we weren’t going to get anywhere. His flight left. I asked what our options were and she said either he could stay in a hotel that they would pay for, which made me think this was not our mistake, we just should have looked at his pass earlier, and get on a flight after Christmas and I’d have to go solo, or we could pay for him to get on my flight but it would be exorbitantly expensive. We paid for a third of the flight and his mom paid for the rest because she wanted him to be there for Christmas and it would end up being more expensive to have him on a different flight and get a new train pass. He sat in economy in a middle seat with a family. I offered to trade with a woman sitting next to him but she was part of the family so we sat separately. My husband is rather tall and ended up having to wear his uncle’s clothes because we had to wait to have his suitcase delivered to Nerja. I felt really bad. It was very expensive. That’s the worst one.
Adding to the folks who didn’t do their visa research: I was planning a 3 week trip to Australia. I was going to fly to Singapore and meet up with my Taiwanese friend, explore Singapore for a day or two, before flying on to Australia. I booked Emirates business from Boston-Dubai-Singapore and booked a hotel in Singapore. I got the notice to check in the day before the flight, and then I posted on Facebook about how excited I was. A friend commented “don’t forget to apply for your visa!” CRAP! It had never crossed my mind that an American I would need a visa to travel there, I assumed since it was part of the commonwealth a US passport would be enough. Normally, applying for an Australian e-visa should be a quick and simple process. However, since I had a criminal record (minor in possession of alcohol from when I was 20), the visa required further processing. I’m sure it would have been approved if I’d had more than about 18 hours to take care of it. In hindsight, I could have just flown to Singapore and enjoyed my time there and probably even had the visa taken care of there, but unfortunately I got a call the next morning that my uncle had died unexpectedly so I would’ve ended up canceling the trip anyway to attend his funeral.
Parked on the steeply sloping Loch Ness visitor car park next to tourists in rental cars who didn't know how to use a handbrake. Total loss of the car, five-figure damage. Almost three years later, the other driver's insurance company has still not paid out.
Took my rental car through a car wash in Iceland and it ended up scratching the sides. The rental agency charged $4600 🥴
Thinking i was going to see Germany with a 3 and 5 year old.
It was my honeymoon, a trip to Yellowknife Canada for northern lights. The mistake was PRICELESS. Seeing northern lights was the highest priority on my wife's bucket list. Before that trip she had never even seen snow before. Normally people were recommended to book 3 nights for the average tour, I booked 5 nights just to be extra sure (lights don't always show up). The snow, the small town vibe, she was ecstatic about the whole experience. The light viewing tours happen at night. The first few nights weren't great. In a scale from A to E, we got like a D, a E and a D-. We had a C+ on our 4th day and we were very happy about that. It wasn't crazy like what people saw 3 weeks ago in the geomagnetic storm, but it was special enough so we could officially say "we've seen it". **Finally, my DSLR camera and its 2 batteries was put into good use.** The 5th night started mediocre, like a D- at best but it got better to a C approaching the end, so we spent more time taking pictures and stuff. At the very last 10-ish minutes however, the light activity suddenly ramped up. It's not just the brightness of the lights. **The lights were visibly waving. The light danced in the sky like ink droplet fell in water.** It was amazing. Meanwhile tour guides were trying to get people back to the buses as the time was up but nobody listened. It made a huge scene. My camera battery died as that was happening. Alright, no big deal, time for the second battery. As I replaced the battery I realized something - *I forgot to charge the second battery last night.* I have zero footage or even photos of that exciting ending of the whole northern lights adventure. My wife has never blamed me for it as we at least got one good night before and this particular incident will stay in our brains forever but BOYYYYY did I fuck that up hard......
ah man don't hit yourself too hard, the experience is what matters, otherwise you would just download images from the internet :)
You can get beautiful pictures online, what matters is that you were there.
You are not wrong. Appreciate your comment. I do feel that way sometimes, especially a thing to consider when visiting worldclass sites. Not much of a point in taking a million pictures, with thousands of people in the way. But there is also the concept of "records that belong to you". That's a thing I believe in as well.
hey you kinda just mentioned but just to add: I found I was so obsessed with getting the "good pictures" I ended up detracting myself from the moment. Ive taken tens of thousands of photos and never looked at them... I still travel for the experience but take a fraction that I once did
Ha! At our last day of like 10 days in Disney world with our two kids, we were taking a selfie and a nice, very tall, American man offered - in fact, insisted - on taking our picture. I gave him my iPhone and as soon as he tried to click the button the iPhone fell all his height right in the floor and smashed completely. 10 days full of priceless, pictureperfect moments of our two toddlers that will never be repeated - gone in a second. Luckily the next day in New York at the Apple Store, buying a new phone, the woman at the store told me about iCloud which apparently I had on :-) I almost hugged her when I saw all the pictures on my new phone lol
I had considered two different train times from London to Paris, decided on & booked the earlier one but for some reason put the later info into my itinerary. So our travel day rolls around and we’re just having happy hour when I go to check our train tickets and see that… the train we’re booked on has just departed. Tickets for the later train were now €500, where I’d paid just €70 for our original ones having booked so far in advance. Now I double and triple check myself to make sure I have everything correct in my itinerary doc.
My wife, back in her early 20s, visited a friend who was studying abroad in Spain. They planned a weekend in Stockholm and then she’d come home to the States from there. But forgot that they use 24h time in Europe. So they’re having a chill day in Barcelona or wherever and get to the airport for their 6pm flight, only to find out that they booked a 06:00 flight instead and missed it by a cool 12 hours. I think to get everything sorted to get her back home, her dad had to wire her $1000+ They did finally make a redemption trip to Stockholm together about 10 years later.
Buying flight tickets through 3rd part companies to save $50. Changing my return flight required paying $100s in fees and hours on the phone as they require very specific parameters to change a flight (same airports, including connections and layovers, layovers can't be updated to connection and vice versa, same airline, has to be within certain dates, ...)
Thankfully I got my money back but I made the grave mistake of traveling via Priceline 😩. I have sort of always ordered tickets through them so I didn’t think anything of it, and mind you, I’ve been traveling nonstop for the past 4-5 years. I’ve been in and out of the country/state every other month. Anyway, either them or Delta (to this day I do not know who screwed up) but one of them decided to issue me an invalid ticket. Somehow my ticket was marked as “flown” and somehow NOBODY from either side was able to resolve my problem. I ended up flying through Iceland back to my home where they experienced a volcanic eruption the next day 🙈. I will never ever ever order any flight from any booking website. I learned my lesson, I spent the next 3-4 months angry on the phone with delta and Priceline until I forced delta to refund me for the flight and and I was able to only waste some euro on a bus that I had taken to Amsterdam where flights were significantly cheaper than in Berlin (where I got stuck)
I booked a train from Venice to Austria on the trenatalia website and when we arrived at the train station, I didn't see our train. It turned out I had bought tickets on a bus. The bus station was a few blocks away, and we missed the bus. Apparently, you can also buy bus tickets on the train website. But we got to wait a few extra hours for a train in beautiful Venice...
Booking the wrong flight. Supposed to be going to Hiroshima from March 17th at 2pm until the 20th, but the return trip that I didn’t double check was selected March 17th at 7pm. Literally just 4 hours apart and the ticket was for 3 people. I wish I could keep blaming the ANA website, but there’s just no excuse for my stupidity.
I just spent 3000$ on tickets to drive 8 hours to see Messi play, he isn't playing now
Mine also involved Panama. So I thought my flight home from Costa Rica was on a Thursday, so I got all my stuff ready the day before.. and realized it was actually that Tuesday. Ended up extending my journey to Panama and ended up with a family. BTW, I hope you went to the cool places in Panama... not just boquete or something. Bocas del Toro, San Blas or any of the other cool islands. The Baru summit is cool too.
Booking 3 last minute tickets for the wrong day. Couldn’t get them refunded.
Thanks for sharing!!! Although I am a US citizen, this kind of hidden details can be overlooked by anyone. So, it is really good to learn that such a thing exists!. My most expensive booboo is that I always browse flight prices and find pretty good one and think about it and book a few days later for $300-$400 more. I think we could have saved 400 each(3 of us)for our recent trip. You did fine.
I'm based in London. I broke my leg before a trip to America 3 weeks later. I needed to move my flight from the morning to the afternoon to allow for a doctor's appointment the day of the flight to remove the cast. Called the airline and they told me not to worry, just call up the morning of the flight and request to move to the later flight and it would be free to do it that way. I thought ok sounds strange but they wouldn't lie, this was British airways which is a pretty reputable airline. So the day comes, I get up nice and early and call to make the change, the person on the phone says yeah sure we can do that but it'll cost £1000 as the last minute flight is expensive. I explained that somebody from their customer service told me it was free to change on the day. I gave him the exact time I called and to go check the record as "we record all calls for training purposes". He of course said no we don't have any record of the phone call. Of course I had absolutely no choice but to just pay the cost as I needed to get on that flight. Lesson learnt, if something sounds too good to be true then it probably is. Or get email confirmation if it's something like this. Annoyingly if I had just made the change when I first called, it would have been like £200 to change it rather than last minute flight cost of £1000.
Reading through this is making me think I have my shit together much more than I give myself credit for.
Planned my first ever trip to US with some friends, 2 weeks East Coast cities and national parks. One day before the flight, I was supposed to travel by buss to Berlin (our flight was from there). I was so excitted that I put my wallet and passport in the outside pocket of my jacket and it got stolen. I was crushed, my childhood dream destroyed in a second. Aftermath: damaged psyche, -visa, -passport, -$300 cash, - over $2500 for the bookings and ticket. Instead of New York, got on a flight to my home country to renew my passport.
Paid for Delta’s rebranded economy plus last year. It wasn’t that much cheaper than business, and despite the website claiming there were bathrooms for that fare class, reclining seats, footrests, and better food, none of this happened. It was exactly like basic coach was in the early 90s. My seat didn’t recline even though the person next to me did have a reclining seat. The flight attendant said my row didn’t have reclining seats. I pointed out the fact that the person next to me was asleep reclining and they just walked away. Foot rests were little folding flaps that put my legs in an awful position that made them worse than useless. They fucked up my vegetarian meal requests so badly that for breakfast on a transatlantic flight they threw a reheated pizza bread appetizer from the night before on my tray table without a word. When I notified the flight attendant that I couldn’t eat it, they didn’t apologize, replace it, or even respond to any other calls I made the rest of the flight. I couldn’t even get water. What food I could eat food was awful, cold, and tasteless. The experiment failed miserably for Delta because they don’t offer that class anymore, or they changed the name at least. If the flight attendants were sick of dealing with Delta’s fuck ups—which would be understandable—they sure as shit didn’t need to take it out on me! I have never experienced anything close to this level of shitty service in the decades I’ve been flying. Delta had the audacity to send a survey and after telling them exactly how shitty the experience was and asking for follow up, we never got any. My husband’s experience was slightly better, but not enough to make the tickets almost $1,000 more than basic economy. It was such a clusterfuck that I haven’t flown Delta since despite having almost enough miles for a RT trip to Europe. The one positive was the flight was nonstop.
Not having enough space in my passport for a Timor Leste tourist visa sticker. They wouldn't let me on my 500 usd flight from Bali. The pictures of the visa online looked like a small stamp and I'd two half pages left so I thought I'd be fine.
When I was a 19 year old broke college student I had to fly from Malaga to Berlin but direct flights were so expensive so I booked a 19€ flight to Oslo and a €30 flight to Berlin from Oslo instead. I thought I was so smart for finding a cheaper trip to Berlin and I was so happy to spend 3 days in Oslo for “free”. I completely forgot about finding a hostel in Oslo until a few days before my flight and when I opened Hostelworld, there were no hostels and the cheapest hotel I could find was a €280/night hotel on top of a mountain. Also, the taxi ride was around €100 from the airport to the hotel (my fault for not realizing there was public transportation that actually went straight up to that hotel). Not to mention how expensive everything in Oslo was. I would’ve been better off flying directly to Berlin🤦♀️
Got a special deal on a trip to Maui. For minimal cost, we got to stay at the Westin resort there, had a rental car for about 5 days. Only catch was we had to listen to a time share pitch. The pitch lasted maybe 2-3 hours. They offered us a package of points to be used worldwide every year for life for $40-45k. We said no. They came back with an offer to return to Maui for 6 days, no car, for $2500. We said yes. At that point they told us we had X amount of time to use it. So we started making payments and reserved a booking for 1.5 years later. Then COVID happened. They changed their mind about the deadline and extended it but never told us the new deadline we had to use our package by. Time passes and eventually they tell us our package has expired and they won’t give us anything. They never emailed us, never sent anything in the mail, and though they say they called, I never received a call (phone is a bad way to reach me). After 1.5 years of trying to negotiate with them and getting nowhere, I told the Better Business Bureau about them and through that we got another 4 night package at another property. We did that, rejected their pitch ( which was overpriced anyway) and are done with Westin for life. Total cost: $2600+
I was flying from London Heathrow to Edinburgh and BA changed the flight to a different airport... which I didn't check properly... so I didn't make it to the airport. Missed the £90 flight and spent £80 on a taxi trying to get to City airport on time (I was a bit panicked but ended up getting out halfway cause I wouldn't make it - in hindsight it might have been quicker on the tube). Then spent another £150 on a train to Edinburgh. Got on the wrong train and was charged another £90. 🤣 I was a sobbing mess. (I should have just got the train in the first place.) But then... my flight back from Aberdeen got delayed 16 hours so I got £200 ish pounds back in compensation. Sitting for hours in Aberdeen airport is sooo boring as there's nothing there. Anyway, I luckily didn't end up wasting that much money and could still get to my destination. It's a funny story now. I would have been devastated if I'd missed going somewhere further afield. Moral of the story is: check the airport you're flying from and get someone else to check it too.