Caveat Emptor!

Last year we decided to start a yearly tradition of going to an OU football game each season with George. Last year it was OU at Iowa State; this year it was the OU at K-State game a few weeks ago. Our record so far is 2 - 0! We got to see OU beat K-State handily, in what was a very exciting game for the first half: 83 combined points in the first; only 10 combined in the 2nd.

While we enjoyed our trip to Manhattan, it was fraught with numerous adventures that taught us valuable lessons at every turn. Behold:

The Ticket Fiasco

We bought tickets about a week before the game on ebay, as we did last year. Unfortunately, we did not have the same luck. The tickets were not shipped as advertised and therefore did not arrive in time. The seller was also incommunicado. It was the day before the game, we were about to fly to Kansas City, and we had no tickets. One last look on ebay revealed a different seller who said we could pick up his tickets in KC, so we gave it a shot, and we scored. The guy was very friendly and organized, and it was a pleasure to do business with him. So if you're in need of tickets on ebay, check out bradinkc. We left him very favorable feedback.

When we got back (which is another story), we filed a complaint against the original seller. It turns out Paypal has a very nice system for handling these disputes, designed to get both sides to communicate and come to an agreement, and if that doesn't work, to allow a claim to be filed which Paypal then investigates. Unfortunately the seller was still incommunicado, so we had to file the claim. After 10 days, Paypal decided in our favor and reimbursed us the full cost for the tickets.

The Rental Car Scam?

We weren't sure if we wanted to rent a car for the trip, but when we saw it would only be $60 total from Budget, we went for it. The car itself was fine (a Kia Spectra), but when we turned it in, we were charged more than twice the quoted price. We went to the desk to ask about it, and the guy immediately saw the problem: we'd been charged the wrong weekend rate. He claimed that the computers sometimes pick the wrong rate on the weekends, and they only know about it if customers bring it up after getting their bill. Some weekends, he's seen as many as 8 out of 10 people get the wrong rate! He quickly changed our bill to the right amount, but the whole thing seemed a bit shady.

The Airline Torture

Our plan was to fly home Sunday afternoon on United, but about half an hour before the flight took off, they announced it was canceled because, when the plane was flying into KC, passengers noticed that there were cracks in one of the wings. Yikes! There was a mad dash to get into a really long line at the ticket counter to switch to another plane, but there were no other planes available on United. We tried switching to another airline, but even that didn't work. Eventually they announced United was flying another plane into KC just for us. The plane arrived around 5pm, but by 7:30 we still hadn't boarded. Finally, the captain came out and announced he believed it was illegal for him to fly the plane because he would exceed his daily duty time. United disagreed, and union lawyers got on the phone with United lawyers to try to figure it out. Around 9pm, the union lawyers won, the flight was canceled, United gave us a hotel voucher and said "Try again tomorrow." No one was happy, of course. We'd just spent almost 10 hours in the airport and gotten nowhere. So we tried again the next morning and finally made it home.

The Smartphone Realization

At one point while we were standing in line at the airport, they told us we could call 1-800-UNITED1 to switch flights. So I pulled out my phone, dialed 1-800 and stopped. I had no idea what to dial next. Wendy and I both have smartphones, with a keypad that doubles as a qwerty keyboard, so we no longer have the standard letter to number mapping.


I had never realized this. Despite the phone's obvious technical wizardry and sophistication, the embedded operating system, the built-in camera, the SD card, wi-fi, internet browser, etc, the phone just can't do the simple task of mapping letters to digits in a phone number!

We tried to figure out what the digits to UNITED1 would be, but when we called the number we came up with, an automated message invited us to call a different number for "stimulating conversation." We declined the offer. For future reference, the number 1 doesn't have any letters; they start at 2 and go three letters per number, except for 7 and 9 which have four letters. Now we know!


Finally, the weekend wasn't a total loss. OU won, and we got to hang out with George and with Wendy's family. But most importantly, George bet me a quarter that this weekend's OU-Texas Tech football game will see more points scored than the next OU-Texas Tech basketball game!