Empire Strikes Back or The Groundhog Day?

So far, this is starting to look just like The Groundhog Day. A UAL representative had left a voice mail yesterday around 5:45 pm EST asking me to contact her today between 8:30 and 5.00 PM. I left her a message last night that I will contact her in the morning. Today I tried to call her around 9:40 EST, then again at 10:00 am EST, and left a message asking her to call back at her convinience as I couldnt get hold of her. She called me back around noon, and said that they have started an investigation into the matter and that she needs to ask me some questions. She asked me if I had the new tickets and I told her that she can get it from my blog and that I didnt have anything with me at the moment. She asked for the url and I gave her the url and appologized for the name I had chosen; told her that it was out of my frustration at the time. She wants me to fax her those tickets, because she was having trouble locating it on the blog. I told her that I will have them faxed over to her tomorrow as it takes me about an hour to get home and back. I will fax those to her tomorrow. She seemed a bit confused at first as to how I had the new tickets, and I felt confused as to her line of questioning. I told her that they were the unused new tickets issued from San Diego and Omaha, and that my father had mailed them to me after they went to Sri Lanka since UAL didnt honor those tickets.

After more questioning, she asked me if I had paid a fee for changing the tickets, and I told her that I had not, and that I would have gladly paid a fee if they had requested. Then she mentioned to me that the tickets my parents had purchased could only be changed on medical grounds for 3 months and that my parents tickets were extended one month beyond that.

No one had mentioned anything about this either to me at the San Diego Airport or to my father at the Omaha Airport at any time. This had not been mentioned in the 2 letters I received from UAL either.

This left me pondering these questions for myself; Why then did UAL issue new tickets in San Diego and later corrected the issue with the 2 reservations in Omaha, instead of telling us that it would not be possible due to the reason that was given today? Should'nt UAL have told us about these at that time? Would not my parents be in a better situation if UAL had told us that information before they started the journey, instead of telling us that the tickets have not been approved, authorized and authenticated partway during the journey? Why was UAL was telling them that their tickets were confirmed all the way to Colombo, Sri Lanka, giving us a false sense of security, only to become victims at the most unexpected way? If UAL had declined to issue those tickets when the request was made, we could have easily bought 2 round trip tickets for the price they had to pay for that one way ticket from LAX to Sri Lanka.

Whichever way you look at it, promises were made, tickets were issued, fixes were made, confirmed, reconfirmed, only to catch them with an unpleasent surprise partway during the journey, at the most unexpected point.