Wrong Booking

My friends and I are going on a trip this June. Our travel arrangements have been made, and all it's left is for me to help them purchase their return ticket from KL to Kuching. Yesterday morning, YC and I did that. We booked a flight on Malindo Air. Whilst checking the names and birth dates so meticulously, we somehow failed to check the time of the flight. As a result, we booked the wrong flight for four pax! What's more, we did not even realise that we had booked the wrong flight!

So we posted the details of our booking in our group chat, informing our friends that we'd settled the bookings and all. Then one observant SL noticed that we'd bought the morning flight instead of the evening flight like we said we wanted to. She alerted us.

I could not believe it! YC and I both were so adamant not to make mistakes! That's why we did the booking together yesterday morning. Two pairs of eyes to check the details before we purchased our tickets. Yet a mistake was made. A serious one too! 4 tickets for four pax! All wrongly booked!

I literally jumped out of my bed where I was resting, and immediately went to the Malindo Air website. I checked the terms of my booking and was satisfied to know that I would be able to change my flight with a penalty of RM50 per ticket and to top up the fare difference.

I tried to call the Malindo Air hotline to enquire, and possibly to make that change on the phone. But the wait was long and I could not speak to an agent. So I immediately headed to the airport where the sales office was.

I explained the problem to the ticketing officer ... and he amended the booking for me upon payment of the penalty of RM200. I think it took only 5 minutes to do make that change, and phew ... the booking was correct again.

I'm thankful that:
a) It had been Malindo Air. If it were Airasia, our wrongly-booked flight would have been done for. It was more expensive to amend a wrongly-booked flight on Airasia. Normally, people would just purchase another ticket instead of paying more to amend the wrongly-booked flight.

b) We'd booked the Economy Flexi fare - because the penalty was only RM50, compared to RM100 if we had booked the Economy Promo fare.

c) The fare for the evening flight was exactly the same as the one in the morning, so we did not have to top up the fare difference.

I managed to help my friends amend the wrongly-booked flight within 40 minutes of the alert. So while YC was jumping up and about, I'm glad I was calm enough to take the appropriate measures to amend the wrong booking.

Most of all, I'm grateful for my friends for understanding. Not a single one of them complaint about having to pay the penalty of RM50, understanding that all mistakes were inevitable even when people were careful.

Gosh. What a huge lesson learnt. Having bought the tickets for four of my friends, I'd yet to purchase my own ticket. I'd really have to open my eyes wide when I do the booking for myself later on.