7 Stupid Airline Rules!

Grrrrr. Need to vent! This is about how it cost me $600 to change a $300 flight.

It has always been our plan to get over to Australia before heading home to Canada. At first it was supposed to be during the kids' school break at the end of April, but being the low-man on the totem pole at work, the vacation was all-booked, so I agreed to finish my contract early and head to Oz in the middle of July. For a Canadian, an Australian winter does not sound too scary.

Our flights home were originally Auckland to Sydney, Sydney to Vancouver and Vancouver to Montreal, all on Aug 6, 2011

So today, I decided to try and change our flight leaving Auckland to bring us to Sydney on July 16 instead of Aug 6. This would give us a 3 week stopover in Australia. Sounds awesome!

I was on the phone for 4.5 hours!

Most of this was on hold. So I tried to amuse myself by talking to my Dad and Harrison, playing 4 games of sudoko, cleaning out my Inbox (down to 15 messages!) and eating mushroom soup. I probably would have put a good dent into a bottle of something, but it was Sunday morning after all. I only threw the phone once when the Expedia guy disconnected me after being on hold for most of the 57 minute call. Even my Dad was feeling some sympathetic frustration and he had the use of both arms.

I managed to connect with a very sweet Air New Zealand representative without too much wait. I waited 40 minutes to talk to Air Canada and I talked to Expedia 3 times. They disconnected me twice and finally I refused to let the last guy put me on hold. Each time when I called back and asked to be connected with the previous representative, I was politely told "I'm sorry sir, this is against regulations". Stupid Rule #1.

Sure, I expected to pay $150 per ticket to change even the minutest detail. It's a rip off, but it's routine. Stupid Rule #2.  I even knew about having to pay the fare difference which is always higher. The fare you want to switch to is never lower. They may as well add it onto the change fee. I knew this would happen and wasn't too put off about it. Stupid Rule #3. So the total came out to the equivalent of $2310 NZD.  Add to that a $105 NZD per passenger flight from Palmerston North to Auckland for a total fee of $2845 NZD. Seems HUGE just to change a flight.

Air New Zealand's web site tells me that tickets from Palmerston North to Sydney via the same flights would cost us $1900 NZD taxes and fees in.

I explained to all 3 of the Expedia guys that their idea of changing flights would cost me almost $1000 NZD more than just canceling that leg of the flight and making my own arrangements, but in their thick Indian accents they explained to me that this was not possible.

Option 1: Cancel the Auckland to Sydney leg of our return. I would make separate (and cheaper) arrangements. I didn't even want a refund. Nabil: "This is not possible sir. We would have to cancel the whole ticket at a cost of $200 per ticket." Stupid Rule #4. Do want to bet that rebooking them would be more expensive than the original fare?

Option 2: Leave everything as is. We just won't show up for that leg of the journey. Amir: "In this case sir, your entire ticket would be canceled as a 'No Show'". Stupid Rule #5.

Option 3: Same as Option 2, but you mark something in the file that says that we aren't showing up. No dice. "I'm sorry sir, this is against regulations". Stupid Rule #6.

Option 4: Give them away to charity? No joke - I tried this. Nabil: "Sir, tickets are non-transferable!" Stupid Rule # 7. I managed to suppress the "I KNOW THAT YOU ASS. I am trying to demonstrate how ridiculous it is that I have to pay $900 to give away a flight for 5 people!" I should have done it anyway as the phone accidentally disconnected at the 57 minute mark. Grrrrr.

So there it is. Asinine airline regulations at their very best. I have to give credit to the last guy. I almost tore his head off within the first minute of our call and he unleashed a thick sickly sweet stream of generic cover-all apologies ("I'm so sorry for all your inconveniences and unhappiness with your day") taken directly from the "Dealing With Hostile Customers" section of his manual.

But they won. Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore and waved my plastic Visa card flag of surrender. I just wanted this to be over. I was done talking in almost complete circles interrupted only by dial tones, so fearing the next disconnection, I buckled and read out the Visa number. I could almost hear the cries of victory echoing through the outsourced customer service office building somewhere in Mumbai. I was a defeated man.

On the brighter side though, we're going to Australia!

10 ... 9 ... 8 ...

Nine days to go.

Our 252kg crate left last Thursday and is in the middle of the Atlantic by now.

The suitcases are 3/4 full with lots of different piles around our bedroom.

The Christmas parties are done, but the schedule is still full with goodbye dinners and drinks.

Most of the tinkering and repairs around the house are done in preparation for my sister's arrival as house sitter while we are gone. All the bills here are more or less on auto-pilot.

Got a bank account in NZ with a decent amount of cash waiting for us. Got the cell phones, ISPs, schools and TV figured out. Still have to figure out where we're going to get a car and how to register it. Overall, pretty well organized.

The girls and I are excited. I was expecting rivers of tears this weekend with Harrison's final hockey game, but so far so good. We play West Island at 6:00pm tomorrow and I think that will be it, so we'll see. So happy Cynthia got the photos organized before hand. It'll be sad to take the names and 'A' (for assistant captain) off his jersey. If his team does really well, maybe we'll do something really crazy and come back for the finals ... or maybe not.

Trish has changed from nervous to nervous and excited. I think she'll be fine although I've stocked up on Kleenex for the last 3 days.

Two shifts left at work - really happy about that, although I'll miss some of the people.

I had a chat today with Mackenzie about how sometimes blond children can be ... over-admired in China and that even though it'll be really hot and humid in Hong Kong, we're going to make her wear a hat to hide her "yellow hair". I think it made her feel special.

Very much looking forward to exploring the Napali coast in Kauai and to our New Year's Eve luau. The kids are going to take surfing lessons.

Although, it's been just over 3 years in the planning and fun to organize, I'm psyched to stop organizing and start experiencing.

Can't believe it's almost here!

How To Move A Family of Five Across The Globe - Part 2

If you're interested in reading about stunning vistas and fantastic experiences, skip this post; this is meant for people planning a trip similar to ours. 

Once the job was confirmed, the next step was to begin the application process for my medical license.

One of the things I liked about working with Wavelength was that in a very streamlined process, once they had matched me to a hospital, the "recruitment" team handed things over to Elinor who handled the immigration stream. I liked that she would often call on a Sunday night just to chat and make sure that things were still going well on my end.

The process was not so different from Canada. Lots of forms to fill out, reference letters to arrange and diplomas to photocopy. The trickiest part was getting an English translation of my medical diploma from McGill that is in Latin. As it turns out, the McGill department of student services provides notarized translations for free! Bonus!

Once the application was complete and mailed off to Wellington, it took about 2 months to get the license which is probably comparable (or even a little faster) than the Royal College in Canada.

I had all our visa applications sitting in an envelope ready to be sent to the New Zealand High Commission in Ottawa. We applied for a work visa for me under the "work under special circumstances" or something like that, student visas for Harrison & Cassandra and a single visitor's visa application for my wife Trish and Mackenzie.

We had our passports back in about a month. There was some discussion about whether we'd have to pay for the kids' school, but with a work permit, primary school kids are granted "domestic student status". Our 4 year old, Mackenzie, who is attending pre-school here will keep my wife company in Palmerston North while I go to work and the two kids attend school.

With the immigration issues settled, it was time to find schools and a place to live.

How To Move A Family of Five Across The Globe - Part 1

If you're interested in reading about stunning vistas and fantastic experiences, skip this post; this is meant for people planning a trip similar to ours. 

While preparing for this trip, I tried to get a few ideas of what needed to be done to move our family across the world. I read a few blogs from other people and I thought I would add my experience into the mix. The preparations can be divided into leaving our life in Montreal and preparing for our life in New Zealand.

The first step was to firm up the timing of our trip. Trish and I were pretty rigid about having our ten year old son Harrison back in Canada to start Grade 5 in September 2011. I'm not sure how we decided on 8 months instead of 1 year - could have been my boss or our reluctance to miss Christmas at home or an entire hockey season. :) So then it came down to Jan - Sept, 2010 or Jan - Sept, 2011. As it turned out, too many great events and other things happening in 2008 & 2009 to save enough money to make this work, so it ended up being Jan - Sept 2011.

The next step was to find a job. I contacted a few recruitment agencies who specialize in health care placements in Australia and New Zealand. Most seemed weak, but Wavelength and Plexus emerged as strong contenders to help me plan our trip.

Our first choice was to go for a "beach" type place in Australia since that would be so different from our regular lives in suburban Montreal. However, all the companies were fairly consistent in their message that 8 months was too short a period for Australian hospitals; they usually insisted on contracts lasting at least one year. If we were to try for an 8 month locum, the hospital would probably be less than pleased at my intention to take the family traveling for two months. And besides, what kind of place would settle for an 8 month contract when the norm was 1 year? Somewhere that was desperate. Not interested.

New Zealand, on the other hand, was used to shorter term contracts and was happier giving me a six month contract which would leave a month on either end of the trip to travel. Perfect!

In May 2011, Gillian from Plexus arranged a telephone interview with a hospital in Invercargill at the very southern tip of the south island. They seemed like nice people, but with over 18 days of rain every month and the coldest temperatures in New Zealand, the weather seemed almost ... Canadian.

In July, 2011, Niki and Nicola from Wavelength connected me with a hospital in Palmerston North at the southern end of the north island, about 1.5 hours from Wellington. The people seemed great, the anesthesia practice seemed similar to mine and all the information I could read about "Palmie" was positive. Good weather, young population and an easy gateway to explore the rest of New Zealand. I was sold.

So after some negotiation on the relocation allowance (very generous!), I signed on the dotted line, learned how to send international faxes and after a few days of cold feet, began the fist confirmed step along the road that would lead us to NZ.

Next up was dealing with immigration.