AA

so, i think i should elaborate on why my facebook status says Winny Wen: HATES AMERICAN AIRLINES WITH A PASSION.

yes i do. in fact, i didn't mention this in my earlier posts, but when i first tried to board my departure flight from LAX, AA actually denied me entrance. i had shown them my eTicket and my passport/visa. after receiving this, they looked at my ticket, a duration of 11 weeks, and my visa, which stated 60 days of continuous maximum stay. because of this, they would not let me on the plane because my return flight would be past my visa.

at first, i didn't actually believe that they were going to go through with this. i thought, are they REALLY goign to try and argue that my visa is essentially "invalid" for my itinerary? goodness, i have to say, i LITERALLY stood at the counter and argued with the idiots who decided to deny me entrance. i kept saying, that i have a valid reason for staying the 11 weeks, and i will be able to extend the visa (which i need to do sooner than i thought) because i will have an "official" reason and have someone validate my stay. i also told them my visa was a multiple entry visa, so it means that it IS extendable, which they didn't seem to understand.

so, despite all my arguing... they still forced me to change my ticket to match my visa, which means that as of the moment, i have a return flight date of 21 AUG. this doesn't even fulfull the 9 week contract that i have with PRIME and with NMMBA, stating that i will be working the entire stay here. and also, because they forced me to change it, they also told me that they will charge be an additional $250 to change my ticket back to the original return date of 13 SEPT, which just made me go more WTF. in fact, it was AA that kept insisting that something was wrong with my visa.

because of this, i got on the phone with the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office in L.A. and tried to see if i could figure this crap out. after confusing the lady on the phone for abotu 30 minutes and getting her annoyed at AA as well, she told me that the next best thing to do is to validate my person and get my visa renewed asap so that i may go and change my ticket.

after getting this information, i went and called the 1-800# for AA in the states. i kid you not, i was on the phone with them for 48 minutes, 43 of which was "please hold." no lie, i couldn't believe that; not only was service at the airport terrible, so was the one on phone. they finally told me that in order to change my plane ticket, i'll have to go to the office in taipei in person to change my ticket. unfortunately, they are not open on weekends, so i wouldn't have any chance of getting there on time on friday or what not to get to the office. i'll need to arrange something with my host mentor and such. UGH.

i emailed my PRIME people.. they were all as puzzled and confused as i was as to why this happened. apparently, i am a first for a case like this. fortunately, they were able to provide me with a lot of support, and also, some documentation to take to the AA office in taipei to argue my case and hopefully waive the $250 flight change fee.

i'll keep everyone updated on this. because if this all doesn't work out as i hope... some shit is going down, and i'll start getting nasty with every incompetant person i talk to on the phone. lol, jk but hopefully i won't become so nasty when i deal with them. i am definitely going to complain to the main office, or whoever, to say that the people i dealt with at LAX needed to get their training redone about flight booking and what not. i just couldn't understand why they felt the need to question my visa... UGH.

anyway, sorry for the long virtual web-rant. it's just so absolutely frustrating. but, taiwan is still extremely fun, new, and exciting. i'll post some pictures and such later on. =D