The Liberty Bell March

When I arrived at Chengdu, I was intent on going onto New Zealand. So naturally I started investigating air tickets on the internet. I soon determined that Air New Zealand (ANZ) could give me all I needed, so I booked a ticket with them. This was when the fun started.

[If any of the timings seem odd, it is probably because they are. There was so much going on, over a short period, that I am not sure I got the sequence of events correct.]
  1. I booked and paid for my air ticket with one of my currency cards, which left this card with only a small balance on it.I loaded up my currency cards from my current account, using online banking to effect the transfer. I had set up this type of transfer a while ago, and it went through smoothly.
  2. As I knew that this transfer would leave my current account overdrawn, I went to transfer funds from my savings account to the current account. This is when I first encountered the problems that National Westminster were having with their systems. I don't know exactly where in their cycle of problems I hit, but it must have been fairly early on. I could not transfer monies between accounts; I could not get confirmation (from the bank) as to whether ANZ had been paid or not; and could not get confirmation that the transfer to the currency card had worked. 
  3. I checked out that I did not require a visa for New Zealand. On a British passport, one can stay for up to six months in New Zealand without a visa. 
  4. I received an email from ANZ stating that they had been unable to accept my booking, because one of their partner flights (the first leg of my flight from Chengdu to Shanghai on an Air China plane) could not be booked. They advised that they had not taken any money from my currency card; had not made the booking; and asked me to contact them via a telephone number in New Zealand to sort out the situation. 
  5. Searching the ANZ web site, booking site, and any other place I thought there might be information, provided me with only one contact option - a URL designed to notify ANZ of problems with their web site - so a webmaster's address, rather than a ticketing address. I sent off an email, and very quickly got back an automated response saying that due to the volume of business (and the low priority of a webmaster's site compared to a booking site) any response was likely to take at least 72 hours. This was not useful given that I wanted to travel within 48 hours. 
  6. At this point, I enlisted the help of the hostel's travel desk - who were superb throughout the whole of this tiresome series of events. They suggested that they book a flight (for 27th June) with Air Southern China (ASC), through their normal ticketing arrangements. This seemed reasonable, as it provided them with business, and consequent commission; provided me with a solution, at a cost less than I had been able to manage myself. The only draw back was that I would have to pay cash for the air ticket - the normal way of doing such transactions in China. 
  7. Drawing sufficient money to pay for this air ticket left my currency card balance at almost zero. Trying again to transfer monies I could neither transfer monies between my accounts, nor transfer monies onto my currency card. However, I had my airticket, with ASC, from Chengdu to Guangzhou, and then on from their to Auckland. 
  8. It was at this point that I received a further email from ANZ stating that they had received my email concerning the problem; had managed to sort out my booking; had debited my currency card with the cost of the flight; and issued my e-ticket. So now I had two valid air tickets to New Zealand, on the 25th via Shanghai and the 26th via Guangzhou; I had paid for two tickets on my currency card - so I assumed this was overdrawn (a state of affairs that should not happen - there is no provision for credit on these cards. I was unable to transfer monies between my accounts to regularise the situation. 
  9. I tried to contact National Westminster by phone (they do, under normal circumstances, provide a reverse charge number for account holders abroad in this type of situation). This is when I found that the hostel's Skype phone was being blocked by the Great Firewall of China - a not unusual situation. As far as they could tell it was likely to take 2-3 days to resume normal service. Their other phone set up for international calls (normal international calls) was not working either. On those days it appeared that the authorities in China did not want anybody making international calls out of Chengdu. 
  10. As my final throw of the dice, I found a Shanghai help desk number for ANZ, and rang them. After ringing for a very long time (certainly over an hour - I know this because I was using the ticket desks' phone, blocking 50% of their calls, and was very conscious of how long I was on the phone) it got transferred to a real live New Zealander (I assume, from the conversation, that she was in New Zealand; that the call had been transferred there; and she was in an office based customer service area). To my relief, she took full details; understood the position; and assured me that she would reverse the whole situation - ticket issue, charging, ticket booking; as if it had never taken place. The only fly in the ointment was that the refund of monies would take about five days. 
  11. Time zones started to show their effect. The person I was dealing with in New Zealand was working office hours (09:00-17:30) in New Zealand, which was five hours ahead of my time. The help desk in Shanghai was operating on the same time as me. The extended branch openings that National Westminster had put in place to try and alleviate problems were on the Sunday, and into the early evening UK time - seven hours behind my time. 
  12. So the only thing I now had to do was obtain sufficient monies in Rmb to pay for the three days I was going to remain in China. I ended up doing this on my current account debit card - thus putting it even further into the red (or so I believed - in reality, down the line, the situation was rather better than this, but I did not know it at the time). Everything looked hunky dory. I had a full day free before my travels. I had a valid air ticket. My financial situation was unknown in detail, and was giving me some concern, but not too much because I was due a refund from ANZ, even if the timing was a little off. 
  13. So on the 26th I got up late, as I knew I would be travelling for 20 hours or more, had a late breakfast, and took the (pre-arranged through the ticket desk in the hostel) hire car to the airport. Got there nice and early. Had a little difficulty, though not too bad, because this was the first time I have started off an international flight with a purely domestic leg. This meant I had to check in at the domestic desk, and would have to check in again, at the international desk, in Guangzhou. Not a real problem, once I knew what to do, but it did take me a little while to sort out what I needed to do. 
  14. The flight was substantially delayed, but because there was so much slack in my itinerary, this was not an issue. I finally took off round about six o'clock in the evening, for a two and a half hour flight. 
  15. Arrived at Guangzhou airport to find that it is huge - it took me 25 minutes to walk from the domestic arrivals area to the international check in desk. So I joined the very slow moving check in queue. There were only three desks open, and it took me until 22:30 to reach the front of the queue. My flight was due to leave at 00:30 so time was starting to get short but still not an issue. 
  16. At the checkout I was asked for my passport as normal. Then I was asked for my ticket from New Zealand. It turned out that although I did not require a visa, I needed to have evidence that I would be leaving New Zealand. I had missed this requirement, and it had not been brought to my attention by any of the bodies involved in the ticket sale. It quickly became evident that without such a ticket I would not be allowed onto the plane. 
  17. I then tried to purchase an air ticket. To quote Gerard Hoffnung, in the Bricklayer's sicknote piece, "at this point I may have lost my presence of mind because I let go of the rope" - or rather, I did not think of the obvious way out of this - to get the cheapest ticket I could from New Zealand (to say Australia). I was over focussed on getting a return ticket to somewhere - Guangzhou, London, Bangkok, or Chengdu. Anyway, I am not sure that this would have solved the problem. There were actually two interlinked problems - I had to get a ticket from New Zealand and had to purchase it before loading terminated on the 00:30 flight. I also had to get evidence that I had got such a flight to the check in desk in order to be able to check in to the flight to New Zealand. 
  18. All the ticket desks in the airport were closed. The business centre was closed. All the airline desks were closed, except one for ASC domestic flights only. The staff on this desk were Chinese only speakers, but were able to let me have the phone number of the English speaking ASC help desk. Checking all this out involved traipsing from end to end of the airport, while the minutes were ticking away. During this process I attracted the attention of a senior airport manager, who did try to assist me in meeting the conditions of the flight I had booked. 
  19. Eventually the only was left for me was to contact the ASC help desk to see if I could purchase a ticket (remembering that all my credit, currency and debit cards were in an unknown situation). I spent about 50 minutes on the phone to them (at a cost I later learnt of £150, because I had lost my international SIM card, and was forced to make this phone call on my UK domestic SIM). The problem was that they could sell me a ticket, but they had no way to demonstrate this to New Zealand immigration, via the Guangzhou check in desk, in the time available. At 00:15 I finally conceded defeat, and realised I would not catch the NZ plane. 
  20. The airport senior manager, who had been keeping an eye on me during this phone call, suggested, at this point, that I go to one of the airport hotels for the night, returning at 06:30 when the ticket desks would be open. I agreed, and he arranged a complementary transfer to the hotel, and confirmation that the hotel could take me, and sent me on my way. 
  21. At the hotel I had to draw more money out of their ATM - on an already depleted currency card - and had to pay cash for the room. The good point was that it was a four star business hotel, but it only cost 480 yuan - about £48. 
  22. Once in my room I could do some thinking and sorting out. In view of the facts that: my visa only had about six days to run at this point, and it would take a minimum of five days to renew it; that I would need another air ticket even if I carried onto New Zealand; that the only sure way I had of paying for a ticket was my savings account debit card, which was about the fourth layer of financial contingency planning I had made, and certainly the penultimate; that I knew I could certainly get into the UK without problem; and that I had valid return ticket from London to Bangkok that I knew I could use if relevant on the 9th July; I decided to fly back to the UK. 
  23. So at 06:00 I left the hotel to return to the airport, went straight to the now open ticket desk; purchased a ticket for London and joined the flight for takeoff at 09:00. Twelve and a half hours later I arrived back in London, sailed through the luggage and immigration formalities and caught the bus to Milton Keynes at 17:30. I had originally been going to treat myself to one night's stay in a good hotel, but all the hotels round Heathrow had Olympic fever - the cheapest quote I had for a single room for one night without breakfast was £380. 
  24. Stayed in a motel for a couple of nights, sorted myself out. I started the process of trying to get a refund on my ASC ticket to New Zealand. Both ASC and Guangzhou airport had suggested that I should be able to get a refund. They also suggested that the only way of getting a refund was via the original ticket agency that sold me the ticket, in Chengdu, and that I would only get a refund in cash. I contacted the hostel I had stayed at and who had arranged my ticket. They have confirmed that a refund is available of about 3000Rmb - or two thirds of the actual ticket price, without any refund of any part of the taxes on the ticket. All that now remains is for them to find some way of remitting the monies to me - which is itself difficult. 
So as envisaged by the title of this piece, I ended up back in the UK for at least a few days. I took the opportunity of seeing, or trying to see various friends, doing minor maintenance work on my boat, trying to sort out my financial situation, trying to get a refund on my ticket, and generally tootling about.