Saving money by avoiding mistakes

Eek....hopefully there was a grace period....like minutes... to cancel or change. I do reread things about 3 times before hitting the send button.

Had to chuckle and really empathize. Haven't done that yet.....but pushing that last "enter" is sooooooo hard. I bring out my schedules, open e-mails with dates, look at websites, make a spreadsheet and then....finally....hit-the-enter. It is amazing how many times I find mistakes after I have double and triple checked everything.

BOTH of us proofread the data before hitting button. Learned to do that after The Husband booked the wrong day for plane tickets! Fortunately it was after they'd initiated the 24-hour grace period. Whew.

It can work the other way as well. I booked our rental car for the wrong day (this was in Boston, not Europe). Fortunately it was not pre-paid. Changing it to the following day saved us $800.

Not a huge amount of money involved here, but I made a 15-Euro goof on my recent trip to the Netherlands.

When I was planning my trip, I knew I'd be going to a lot of museums, and so I planned to buy a Museumkaart at the first opportunity, which I expected would be the Mauritshuis in The Hague.

On my way from Antwerp to Delft, I had to change trains in Rotterdam, and I took the opportunity for a walking tour of the city. Along the way, I decided on the spur of the moment to visit the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, paid the 15-Euro admission, and not until the next day did I realize I could have bought my Museumkaart there.

Fortunately, I didn't make another mistake I easily could have. I put my luggage in a locker at the Rotterdam train station. Luckily, I had my train ticket in my day bag. I say "luckily," because the only way I was able to get back into the train station was by scanning my ticket.

I feel your pain! Last year at this time I went on a booking site to reserve a non-refundable room for a hotel in Copenhagen. I hit send and nothing came back reserved. It looked like it didn't go thru, so about 10 minutes later I went to the hotel site (which I should have done from the beginning... Yes, a RS suggestion, my bad!) and booked the same room reservation for same dates. Then what do I see in my email inbox???? A confirmation from the booking site! Yikes! I now have 2 rooms for the same dates. I immediately emailed the hotel directly.. pleading the problem. They gave the booking site the right to cancel our reservation without penalty. Thank you Hotel Alexandra! BTW, this is a great and funky hotel in a perfect location. Love, Love, Love!!!!!

Thanks for the posts, everybody!! Unfortunately, the hotel didn't choose to waive the 100% cancellation charge so we still have a €69 hotel room on August 24. And this was WITH a spreadsheet to keep my dates straight -- should have had my husband review the booking so I could blame him ;-)
Glad I wasn't booking the Ritz!!

Laura, ask the hotel if they could possible do something special like upgrade you or give you a great view... perhaps throw in breakfast or a comp drink.. not sure what they offer. But a $75 lesson isn't all that bad. hope you have a great trip Mont St. Michel is on our list to see.

@tgreen, thanks for the suggestion. Since the price for the correct date was outside my comfort zone, we are skipping MSM this trip (went there in 2013) and adding the day to Normandy instead.

Oh, Lauri -- What a drag! And so unlike you to do this ...
But Normandy is wonderful and an extra day there is the best consolation prize!

I worry that the month/day/year vs. day/month/year order will bite me sometime when I'm making reservations.

Be particularly careful at the end. I've seen websites that, for some reason, change vital information for seemingly no reason, so where two mouse clicks ago, everything was correct, suddenly something important has changed (like the date just reverted to today).

Yes, Lee, I got caught by computer glitches once before -- tried to book for a coming weekend night and somehow booked for the current night. Luckily I was able to reverse that one. Have also had train websites revert to current date, too, but have caught that before pushing "buy"
But in the grand scheme of a three-week trip, this was just a minor blip.

Now that we all act as our own travel agents, and now that more and more things are booked in advance online, I think we all have made - or almost made - these kinds of mistakes. I know I have. I accidentally booked the Historic Green Vault in Dresden for "today" - the same day I was online - and via e-mail, they very graciously changed our tickets for the day we would actually be there.

And I've seen the same thing as Lee - information that changes between screens, so you have to review the final screen carefully before hitting "book."

Because airline tickets now have the 24 hour grace period, some people think other things do, but many (like train tickets) do not.

So your "reminder to self" is indeed a reminder to everybody.