You folks aren't going to believe this!

I spent some time on the phone trying to get through to Austrian here in London till they closed. That's 20 minutes on a non-geographic rate number - it makes money for them but not for me. Well, then I tried their line in Austria. Success after three minutes, and better hold music too.

The very helpful fellow told me that no, everything was OK, I was all set to travel on the 19.35 flight. Eh?, I said, I'm supposed to be on the 15.45 flight. At which point I could almost hear the lightbulb turning on above his head as he looked at the record and figured out what happened! It turns out that Opodo made the booking on the 15.45 flight, and then cancelled that booking and re-booked us on the 19.35 flight, *without telling us*. The 15.45 flight on which we were originally confirmed (or not, as the case may be!) is now fully booked, but there is a 14.05 BMI codeshare that does have seats.

So, the good news is, it would appear we can go to Vienna tomorrow. The bad news is, we had plans for tomorrow evening - this puts us out in a major way - and although I'm relieved that it looks like we'll get there, these kinds of shenanigans are absolutely unacceptable. Not to mention the time I've wasted today on this and the stress it's caused. I've e-mailed the address jplondon gave above (thank you!) and will be on the phone with Austrian and Opodo tomorrow to see if we can get on that BMI codeshare. If not, hmmm...I'm not the kind of guy to ask for miles for a pink sausage/inoperative IFE etc., but this is really beyond the pale. How would you go about extracting compensation from the guilty party (which appears to be Opodo)? Dispute the credit card charge, for a start?