Those that have had the pleasure of travelling with me understand the routines I keep to minimise the inherent hassle. My absolute hero in life, apart from Fraser Gehrig, is Macon Leary from “The Accidental Tourist”. Writing guidebooks for those that hate to travel sounds like something I could do quite well.
Never
Ever
Be tempted to put your credit card straight into the parking ticket machine at Melbourne Airport. Why? Two crap scenarios can play out that I am aware of…
- The machine swallows your card in a malfunction. This has occurred to a colleague. It is not a simple process to recover your card. So, off to your holiday / work trip without, what is your primary credit card.
- As happened today, the whole system was not accepting any credit card payments. So, they were doing manual old fashioned carbon slips at the gate. Good luck getting a refund if they don’t correctly “exit” your card from the gate… you will continue to be charged virtually forever…
Can’t think of any others at the moment, but I always just take the extra minute to take a ticket, and then pay against the ticket in the machine as I leave.
