Planned escape is turning into a disaster

By Staff
Scot Beard
Over the past year or so my wife, Erin, and I have seen a dramatic change in our spending habits.
Embracing a newfound feel of fiscal responsibility, we have paid off quite a bit of debt and have been able to save a little money in the process.
Although I am happy to have the credit card companies off our backs, achieving this required quite a bit of sacrifice on our part.
We gave up going to the movie theater, going to concerts and going to sporting events.
We even cut back the number of times we have eaten at restaurants but have not eliminated that pleasure from our routine yet, which is probably one of the reasons we have only reduced our debt and not eliminated it.
After exercising so much responsibility Erin and I recently took a look at our situation.
While we have been able to purchase our home, we have not had a chance to get away for a few days together.
We decided it was time to splurge and purchase tickets to a concert in Nashville.
Soon after we reached this decision, we talked to one of our friends to see if he and his wife wanted to go with us. They agreed so my wife and I offered to purchase all four tickets and let them pay us back.
We got on the Internet and purchased the tickets only to find we had accidentally ordered three tickets when we needed four. My wife called the ticket distribution company to add a ticket to the order.
We thought everything was fine, but I underestimated the level of stupidity at the nation's largest ticket distribution company.
The company charged us twice for the single ticket – the best part is they charged us two different prices for it. We did not discover this until we checked our bank account and realized nearly $100 was missing.
Several calls have resulted in various explanations. One person told me the money was being refunded while another told me he did not see a refund in the system.
As bad as this is, it got worse.
Believing we were only going to be charged once for a ticket, we decided to pay another bill. Since our account was low thanks to the idiots at the ticket company, the electronic withdraw did not go through because the amount was 56 cents – that's right, less than a dollar – more than what we had in our account.
I called the ticket company back to find out where my money was and what they were going to do about the overdraft fee since it would not have occurred if the company had not charged us twice for one ticket.
While I waited on hold, the connection was mysteriously broken.
Even if the company does refund the charge and the overdraft fee I know I will still be angry. No matter how hard I try not to, I will be thinking about the ticket fiasco during the concert.
Former Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder was right, Ticketmaster does charge too much for tickets – unless you can afford to pay twice face value and an overdraft fee from your bank.