Oh how familiar all this sounds to me. Yesterday I spent a total of 5 hours trying to buy tickets through Malaysia Airlines online booking system. And, you guessed it, I still don't have the tickets. 2 hours and 40 minutes of this time I spent on the phone with their customer support (no exaggeration here - I looked at my call logs). I live in Thailand so I learned what patience means but I must say that MA customer support is hands down the worst I ever experienced anywhere in the world.
The problem I had was, again, with a website glitch. Not the same as OP had - my problem was that my card kept being declined. There is nothing wrong with my card whatsoever and I called my bank two times to make sure that there is no issue on their side and both times they confirmed that no declined transactions can be seen in the system. And I trust them. Kasikorn bank has a very helpful and professional CS and they've never let me down before.
On the other side, there is MA's support where they:
- put me on hold for 30 minutes straight,
- they keep telling me that everything is fine on their end,
- then they tell me that I should have some security code (issued by my bank) because I am buying from outside of Malaysia (never heard of this before, and no it's not CCV code),
- then they transfer me to another operator and I have to explain everything from the very beginning,
- then they put me on hold again,
- then they say OK, we have a solution for you: you can book by phone but the price they offer me is $4,300 instead of $2500 - almost double!!!,
- then I start raising my voice,
- then they put me on hold again for 20 minutes or so,
- and finally they come back to tell me that the problem might be my popup blocker
- so I deactivate my popup blocker and try again but there still was no popup during the booking process
- then I just didn't have energy to call them again so I gave up and decided to fly with some other company
To spend 5 HOURS and still not have the tickets, can you imagine that?