Friday 6 December 2013

Hostel horrors

Yesterday morning I left my hostel on a not so long trip to...the next hostel. When I finally arrived I was told that my booking had been cancelled because they couldn't charge my card and that I had received a mail which said I should have contacted them. Now of course the already expensive dorm room wasn't available anymore and my only option was to book a private room... which I did since at that point I had no internet connection to check for something else. So now I had to pay almost twice as much of what was already insanely expensive for a hostel. 

The room wasn't ready yet, so I went for the mall to buy a SIM card. I also used the opportunity to eat kebab(and was seriously disappointed). I got lucky  in a place called warehouse after being sent there by a cashier in a supermarket which heavily advertised that I could buy the SIM there but which didn't actually sell it anymore...

Finally I had internet access. I returned to the hostel, went to the room and checked my mails(first trying WiFi but that just didn't work at all and the quota is ridiculous being just a fourth of what I had in the haka lodge and more data would be way more expensive than on the phone...). The mail said that my booking shouldn't have been cancelled before 6pm on the day of arrival...  So I went to the reception and the receptionist said after some discussion that she would talk to her boss. 

Today I'll find out what the result of that was I presume. They should refund me, because this was completely not an error on my side, the account is fine and they shouldn't have cancelled the booking. It's also quite unfair that they didn't even bother to call and just immediately cancelled the booking. So from this experience I'd warn people to stay away from "The old country backpackers" in Christchurch. They have a very customer unfriendly attitude  and WiFi is unusable. 

After all that mess, i called immigration for news, but again nothing, i was told to ask the officer who worked directly on my case which i did only to get an automated reply saying that he was on holidays until the 16th. Great, time to book another hostel and wait.

I think I will probably buy a cheap car. That way I will have a cheap place to sleep and a means to get around. That would be much nicer if i wasn't traveling around alone, but oh well better than going broke.

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