Oops! Did I do that?

I bought an open jaw ticket last year for a trip that included flying out of Naples at the end of the Southern Italy tour. Bought early at a good price. Yay!
A few weeks before the trip, I was horrified to realize I booked my return a day early, not the last day of the tour. I paid to change the date, but I've blocked out the cost.

I do know how I went wrong.
I almost always stay an extra day at the end of a tour so as not to have to leave for an early flight, and the flight home to PHL was an afternoon flight. Yay, I can leave a day earlier then planned. Oops.

Carol now retired, Thanks for sharing. I would also never have known that there were two St. Johns in the Maritimes.

My Oops moment-in 1990, I ate some delicious(especially compared to everything else we were served there, as in "only take one piece of bread or someone else in the tour group will go hungry") tomatoes and got stomach sick. We also thought the Circle Line on the London Tube would go a full circle and found out that it didn't.

Welllll….. In February, I flew from NZ to Melbourne, Australia - picking up a rental car to head straight out of town that evening. Two days before I flew, I thought I should recheck where I would go to pick it up on arrival. And I discovered I had rented it in Melbourne, FL, instead of Melbourne, AU. Thank goodness for free cancellation and a slightly cheaper rate for Australia.

My daughter was in a somewhat small city in Indonesia and went to the wrong airport for her flight home (as she said, who knew there were two?). By the time she discovered it at the wrong one, she couldn’t get to the correct one on time so just had to buy a new ticket.

St. John's, Newfoundland instead of St John, New Brunswick.

Details matter

$330 is (relatively) cheap 'tuition'

Glad you discovered it before you were at the airport with the 'wrong' ticket

Also, I share for laughs. I seriously doubt I am going to learn to not make mistakes. LOL!

Oh. 10 years go, I also went to Roma Termini to catch my train to Florence, only to find out it left from Tiburtina. I had no idea there were two “T” long distance stations in Rome. Ha! Had to buy a new ticket - and discovered that somehow I had left my credit card at home…..

I was with a friend and we laughed so much at our stupidity. That was back when we had to notify banks about out of country use - and she had a card but had forgotten to tell her bank she’d be using in Italy. Thank goodness it still worked!

Carol, that is definitely an "oops" moment! I've had a few although nothing like that. At least you figured it out before it was last minute!

I recently read about a UK couple that were taking a long weekend vacation to Budapest. They bought their ticket, got on board, had some drinks, and were very surprised when they landed in Bucharest, Romania. They had unknowingly booked tickets to the wrong city. They had a sense of humor about it, though, and decided to go with the flow and stay in Bucharest. By all accounts, they had a good time. :-)

Bought tickets to the wrong day for the Olympics last year, wrong Thursday, the day we were going to be in Normandy....I kept thinking "why is this handball ticket not showing up in the correct order in my app?" yeah.....tried to sell it, but pre OC, no takers....

but I gave them to my friend who lives there who was delighted to go, as she didn't get tickets due to her vacation schedule not being cemented that far in advance....

I'm not sure if this counts but it always makes me chuckle...
Our families' best friends, (mom, dad, 2 children) were headed out of the country for the next foreseeable future. Like in it would be years before we saw them again. They were moving their entire life to live in Spain. So, we all pitched in and helped them with months of preparation, selling their house, possessions they couldn't take with them, re-homing their pets, and on and on. The day of departure, it was an hour-long, emotional goodbye as we all went to the airport to send them off. Their parents, grandparents, close friends had all come to say farewell to our dear friends. OK... got the picture?
We're taking pictures with them, waving, hugging the children and knowing they'd be so grown up the next time we saw them. They finally say goodbye and go to the ticket counter.
We turn to leave and a few minutes later are almost to the exit of the airport when we heard a commotion. It was our friends waving us down. 2 of their 4 passports were EXPIRED and they weren't going anywhere for a while !!!! We all still laugh and laugh about that to this day, decades later. But, they were not laughing on the day it happened, believe me.

We had a "stupid fee" moment in our recent road trip in British Columbia and Alberta. We booked afternoon tea at the Fairmont in Lake Louise. There were some problems with their presentation including that they focused so much on what Champagne you would choose. Each different champagne they offered changed the price of the overall tea. Neither of us is particularly knowledgeable or interested in champagne. I just had my tea to drink. My husband looked at the options and thought "for 5CAD more, I might as well try the Champagne". It was Dom Perignon but we didn't know the difference. Turns out he misread the price. We paid over 100CAD more for the champagne not 5!!!

FYI The afternoon tea was not a success in other ways as well. They switched our tea orders and I thought they just had horrible breakfast tea but they had given me chai. The sandwiches were dried out on the top and soggy on the bottom. The desserts were frightening as they were in neon colors. A disappointment overall.

On a certain date in February one year I was booking my hotel for a May trip. The website was a bit glitchy and I had to refresh more than once to get through choosing date, room, airport pick up and other things. Boy was I surprised when I got to the airport, the driver wasn't there, I phoned and no one answered, finally got my own taxi to hotel, only to find out the website refresh had reset the arrvial date to the next day in February and I didn't notice. And they were full and I had to find something else. The hotel was very nice, gave me access to a room to shower and change before I went to look for something else, it was just that the last guest would be arriving later in evening and so I couldn't stay. Always carefully check those email confirmations!

Mix up AM and PM? Been there done that - multiple times on the Washington State ferries. Mix up airport destinations? Yup, did that, although it was just different Los Angeles area airports so not that big of a deal. My friend who was picking me up just had to drive a little further. The potentially bigger mix up was getting off at the wrong train station in Switzerland. We got off the train in Sion thinking huh, that's funny, do the Swiss trains actually run ahead of schedule. Of course not. We were supposed to get off at Sierre. Oh well, walk over to the train station cafe, have a drink, watch the mountain bikers come down the Crans-Montana and wait for the next train.

I don't have an example off the top, but I hope you had a wonderful time in my neck of the woods! I love hearing about people visiting the Maritimes.

PQ

My Italian husband did this a few years ago, in Italy, so he has no language barrier excuse !!

He was making a last-minute trip from his hometown of Turin down to Sicily to spend some beach time with friends who have a house down there. For some reason, he literally went to the airport in Turin to the ticket counter to buy his return ticket.

Went down to Sicily, saw the friends, had a grand time. He got some obscenely early return flight, so he and his buddy had to leave the beach house at something like 4:30 am to get to the Palermo airport.

They get there, he goes to check in, and they point out his ticket was for the previous day. Oops. He had to buy one on the spot - and there were no tickets available for that early flight so he had to hang around the Palermo airport for a good part of the day as I recall!!

My latest snafu was buying an airline ticket for the right day but wrong month. I realized it immediately but it was too late. I called Aegean the next day and they kindly refunded me half of the price of my non refundable ticket.

Other snafus: buying my niece a ticket from Florida to Chicago INSTEAD of from Chicago to Florida for my dad’s funeral.

Translated military time wrong and went to airport for what I thought was a 3 pm flight but really was a 1 pm flight. Had to buy a new ticket.

Bought am tickets instead of pm tickets. Realized at least in time to go to airport for am time.

Oh I forgot this one. I was in a hurry as I bought a ticket to Boston. Got the
date right, time right, the to and from right, my name right, but not my gender. Oops. Realized it a couple of days later when reviewing the confirm to let my family in Boston know when to pick me up. Called the airline. The call center person laughed and said, yes that would have been a problem at TSA. He corrected it and alls well that ends well.

I once bought a domestic one way ticket for the wrong direction. Fortunately, I figured that one out ahead of time and paid my stupid fee to change it.

Another time, I bought a domestic ticket out of San Francisco, but showed up at Oakland Airport. Unbelievably, security didn't realize my mistake either and let me through. I had to pay my stupid fee to rebook, while the agents wondered how I had gotten through security.

I mixed up my departure and arrival times for a flight from Atlanta to DC once years ago. Fortunately, Delta runs flights to DC frequently, and so they just put me on the next flight ---- at no extra charge. These days, I imagine I would have to buy a new ticket.

Went to Africa last September with a friend who was experienced with Africa travel and had made all the arrangements. We landed in Johannesburg and later went to Cape Town, where she had reserved a rental car. Got to the rental counter and no reservation. Eventually, the counter people figured out that she had had rented the car for Johannesburg and not Cape Town. All was resolved, we got the same model car and went on our way.

For myself, it's a couple of times when I/we didn't get off the train at our stop. The first time, years ago, we were in deep conversation with a couple from Australia and just went on by our stop. Got off at the next town, had dinner, and got another train back. Last month, I was on the train after a hard day, it was 93 degrees out, and I just spaced out and didn't get off at my stop. The next stop came soon, fortunately in both of these cases.

Ohhhh, yeah...

Bought a ticket from SEA -> RNO, departure at 11:00.

Get to the airport day-of at 9:00am and go to check in my bag.

"You're really early," the bag-checker says.

"Yeah, I like to get to the airport early."

"Well, I can't check you in because your flight is at 11:00 -PM-."

Wife: DAGGERS.

Had to cancel the whole trip because of that little mistake.

Moral: check thrice, buy once.

-- Mike Beebe

Labor Day weekend, 2001: My then teen-aged daughter and I flew to Paris for a long weekend trip. We got to our hotel only to find out that it was the wrong location of the hotel chain that we had reservations for. Thankfully, the hotel staff offered to change our reservation to their hotel, even at the same rate that we had for the other hotel.

What a fun conversation, thank you! Years ago I forgot about the 24 hour clock for overseas airlines ( this was for Israel) and booked for something like "1:30". Fortunately I realized before travel and was able to change it. Lesson learned, I triple check now for all transportation!

Back in 2015 I booked my first hotel (the only advance booking I made) to start on the night I'd be flying across the Atlantic. By some miracle the light bulb clicked on just before the reservation was to become non-refundable, and I was able to correct it at no cost.

In 2024 I wanted to extend my stay in Vienna after a travel mate headed home. I found a less expensive place to stay and somehow booked a room starting one night too early. I discovered the problem the next morning and sent an email to the hotel, explaining my error and asking to add a night at the end of the stay. I expected to eat the cost of the unneeded first night, but the hotel just shifted the reservation for me at no charge.

My wrong-month booking error was a loo-late booking, so it didn't cost me anything except a mad scramble to find a place to sleep for the night. The B&B owner helped with that, bless her.

I tend to book things late, so I do end up paying extra, sometimes, for hotels and train tickets. I guess that's a procrastinator tax.

I wish we used the 24 hr clock more in the US. Once you get used to it, it save the am/pm issue. Then there is the whole other issue of day/month vs month/day - made that mistake enough to have twitches and sometimes I swear the computer gremlins switch it on me.

It was 1980 and a much younger me was travelling solo through SE Asia. My “bible” was a book called SE Asia on a shoestring by Tony Wheeler. Rick was a traveller, not a guide book writer at that time. I flew from Singapore to Bangkok. Tony instructed to take the train into Bangkok, get off at the main station, then walk to the Station Hotel.

I went to the station across the street from the airport. I kept saying “Bangkok” to the agent, gave him some money and he pointed to a train. I got on the train and off we went. I didn’t know how far the main station was, and of course all the signs are in Thai script. No problem! It’s probably at the end of the line. Many stops, many chickens coming on board. Finally at the end of the run, we all got out. Thinking I’m really tired, so I’ll take a 3 wheeled Bemo taxi to the Station Hotel. The driver keeps driving around and saying Station Hotel? I eventually got off, checked into a hotel, thinking I would find the Station Hotel. The only person that spoke English was a young Thai man. I asked him where in Bangkok I was. He said I was 80 km north of Bangkok!

Next morning went back to the train station, and again said Bangkok, paid my money and was directed to my train. After a couple of hours the conductor came to punch tickets. He looked at mine and started yelling at me. Another English speaking young man spoke up and asked if I needed help. Alas, I was again going in the wrong direction.
Had to get off at the next station and waited a long long time to get on yet another train and into Bangkok. I think it was close to 30 hours from landing to checking into the Station hotel. I’m still directionally challenged.

Saint John, New Brunswick:
This city is located in New Brunswick, and its name is written without an apostrophe and with "Saint" spelled out.

St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador:
This is the capital city of Newfoundland and Labrador. It uses the abbreviation "St." and includes an apostrophe "s".

In March 2020 I was so keen to bag an under £500 air fare from Sydney (Australia) to London that I booked it for the day I arrived after a 50 day line voyage from London.
Although I have pretty much exhausted Sydney in the past I had planned a two night stay. In case of any delays at sea, also for genealogy in a town an hour or north of Sydney, and to travel with the famous riverboat postman.
As it was all I managed was the genealogy bit (on the trail of a '£10 pom'), more rushed than ideal, but the core element was achieved. Dad would have been so happy that day.

The benefit was to get a widebody jet with only a few dozen people in economy- pure luxury on an overnight to Abu Dhabi. And if I'd booked the correct date I wouldn't have got back at all via that route as Abu Dhabi closed down the day after. Of course for the day flight to Manchester I got a packed narrow body, but for a day flight less important.

Sadly I am unlikely now ever to get the riverboat postman.

Many years ago I caused a disturbance at the Holiday Inn on Rhode Island Ave in Washington DC when I couldn’t get into my room, and to my surprise it even seemed to have someone else in it, although I had already checked in and put my stuff there before heading out for some sightseeing. Eventually hotel security told me that although it was the right room number, my key appeared to be from the other Holiday Inn that was also on Rhode Island Ave, about a block away.

I wish we used the 24 hr clock more in the US. Once you get used to it, it save the am/pm issue.

I wish we did, too, Patty. I was in the Navy many many moons ago and got used to 24-hour time, but over the years, it gets harder to remember. That said, you can change your phone settings to have it show up in 24 hour time. I do that on both my phone and my Apple watch, and it's an easy settings change. Then it makes it much easier to figure out what time it is when you're traveling.

But I still get dinged on the day/month/year thing and have to really pay attention to that.

Day/month/year and calendars that start on Monday instead of Sunday have caught me before.

I wish we used the 24 hr clock more in the US.

I used to switch to the 24 hour clock on my phone when I went abroad, but for the last ten years or so I simply leave it on 24 hour mode full time...I don't even think about it anymore, it doesn't cause me any issues at home.

Earlier this year we booked a transfer from Singapore Changi to our hotel. A good price was offered when we booked our hotel through Booking.com. The thing is, Booking assumed we wanted the transfer the morning of our first night, which we didn't- we were arriving after midnight. Luckily the person reached out to arrange things on WhatsApp, and we realized. We were able cancel and rebook, only losing about 15CAD.

I blame Chris!

This one has happened more than once

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/oops-british-couple-flies-to-canada-by-mistake-1.353972

https://viewfromthewing.com/passengers-wind-cold-sydney-canada-instead-sydney-australia/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/italian-tourists-end-up-in-wrong-sydney-1.975605

SYD Sydney Australia

YQY Sydney Canada

How do they get messed up?

Not like a simple typo of GEG vs GIG ( Spokane vs Rio)

Tried BA and several search sites and all produce Sydney Australia as the 1st result, when entering S Y D to spell out Sydney. Really takes some effort to select Sydney Canada

I see someone already beat me to the stories of people booking trips to Sydney, Australia and somehow finding themselves in Sydney, Nova Scotia. However in a similar vein, heard a story once of a British couple who wanted to book a flight to Las Vegas. They lived in Birmingham, UK. Only problem is, they booked a flight to Vegas from Birmingham, Alabama.

Great thread, Carol!

This is one the hotel, not me, did, but it remains one of our sons' favorite vacation memories. We took our young boys to Yellowstone National Park, booking into a classic motel right outside the park. Dropped our bags, went out for dinner. Coming back down the hall afterward, we thought we heard voices in our room, and joked how funny it would be if someone was in our room. They were! The room was packed full of chatting Japanese men, and our luggage was nowhere in sight. I learned that the motel had mistaken which room they gave us, and thought we were someone else who skipped out on the bill. We found our luggage in a heap outside the kitchen door. My sons had never seen me so mad. We got a new room and excellent free breakfasts the next day.

KC, that is a FUBAR situation! What a bizarre mistake! At least they made good, although they should have comped the whole stay for you. :-)

Really takes some effort to select Sydney Canada

London, Ontario and London, UK. I often get temporarily excited when I see how cheap the flight is. I rarely look at the 3 digit code first because I wouldn't recognize most of them.

In 2023 returning from Mt Gambier (South Australia) we decided we would book accommodation in Portland (Victoria) for the night.
We realised when we google mapped the hotel location that it was going to be a very long journey. Fortunately it was an easy fix to cancel and we found a room in our Portland not the American one.

I booked flight from Newark NJ via Toronto or Montreal (I can't remember which one) to Halifax but when I printed our boarding pass in Halifax I had us returning to LaGuardia not.Newark. It took me two glasses of wine to break the news to my husband !!

My husband once booked a work trip to Birmingham. His trip was for the US, but he managed to buy a ticket to the UK, lol. I called the airline and they cancelled that flight no problem.

We went to see the space shuttle once as a friend was the pilot. We had special parking passes, etc as we were in the friends and family area. We had so much swag from the few days leading up to it, so I sent a box of it home. I accidentally put the parking passes etc in it! We had to go to our friend's parents hotel and get new passes from them.

A work colleague was delighted to catch an earlier flight home after a business trip in New York City. Sadly, he didn't notice that the flight arrived at Chicago's Midway airport, not at O'Hare where his car was parked.

We have a friend who drove 100 miles from his home town to the Atlanta airport and went to Europe. Upon returning to Atlanta, he was jet lagged, tired, and sleepy. Took a shuttle back to his home town and then realized his car was at the Atlanta airport. A good neighbor drove him back to get the car.

First adult trip to Europe with my friend. We landed in Brussels and went to pick up our rental car downstairs. Unfortunately she had not accounted for the date change on the overnight flight, so the car was booked for the wrong day. Somehow in the ensuing reservation chaos, her CC got charged 3 times so we were there for a couple of hours before the men at the rental counter patiently got everything sorted out. We then drove to our hotel in downtown Brussels, whereupon the hotel owner informed us that the car rental agency had tracked us down because my friend had left her passport at the airport! So back to the airport, then back downtown to the hotel.

The punch line to the story was 3 months later when we returned to Belgium. We walked up to the Hertz counter, which was staffed by the same 2 men. We were happy to see them, but they both just stared at us with horrified looks on their faces. Then one of them finally said, "Oh, it's you two!" It was very clear that they were wondering what disaster we would create this time! Fortunately none, but it was just dumb luck.

it's good to know that I am not alone.

I recently posted about this costly mistake on forum not just costly in money but also time and great stress.

I have a trip booked from Austin, TX to Tokyo and then. home from Seoul on American Airlines. I had done a lot of research and had flights that I was very happy with.

American changed my flight from Austin to Tokyo and put me on one that really did not work. It was a horrible change. The notification was sent to me about 3 am my time and because I am an insomniac, I was awake.

I got really frantic when I saw the change and tried to call American to rebook but had difficulty getting a good connection. I had searched aa.com and called the contact number at the bottom of the page. I did not get a decent connection until the third call.

The agent rebooked me but I was charged $759 for the change. He told me that my credit did not cover my new flight fully.

After getting some sleep, I called American back to find out why they had charged me $759 for the change. They told me they did not and suggested that I needed to call my bank.

To make a very long story shorter, I had accessed a FAKE American Airlines website and I had called fraudsters. The fraudsters had the ability to book and rebook flights and hotels. The fraudsters did offer travel services but at exorbitant fees.

I opened a dispute with Citi but it looks like I am out the $759 because I did receive services, Furthermore Citi sent me a fraud alert when the fraudster was charging my credit card while I was on the phone with them which i ignored.

Very expensive lessons.

There are.a lot of fake websites that look like the real one. Be very careful when booking travel.

Be careful doing business when sleep deprived.

And when stressed, take a deep breath before trying to change or correct travel or probably anything else.

I've been reading this thread since the start. Didn't have much to write about. However, this morning I realized my reservation for a trip across Lake Michigan on the S.S. Badger ferry was scheduled for the incorrect date, this Thursday! We want to travel on Sunday, not Thursday. I had made our reservations in May but obviously had not checked to be sure the dates of travel were correct. I contacted the Badger reservation department. In past years when we called to book travel we have had to book dates different that we had wanted as the dates we wanted to travel as the ferry could not accommodate our truck and 20' travel trailer. This ferry is huge, (originally built to carry rail cars) but fills to capacity this time of year which is peak tourist season in west Michigan. Would they have room for us on Sunday? I was concerned we were out of luck. To my great surprise and delight the friendly reservation agent did find there was room for us. Disappointment averted! We will be attending AirVenture, the big airshow in Oshkosh following a few days in New Glarus. And we will travel to Wisconsin of the date we originally wanted. Yay!

I almost made an “oops” reservation Saturday. I was working on my trip to northern Italy and had a note to make a timed reservation for a palazzo. When I pulled up the website, it surprised me that it would be such a busy place in this smaller town! I picked a time & date but paused… and looked up the exact location; it was for the same name in Rome!

I was looking at train schedules on the Netherlands International site and was getting frustrated because every time I tried to look up October 6th it bumped me to October 5th. It was my wife that realized that the website was defaulting to my computer's local time and not to Netherlands time. I wasn't booking anything, but it was a good reminder to check date and time of your tickets before hitting the payment button.