The ‘continue’ button

I’ve booked and bought a few things on the Internet in my time but never have I had the fright I had today when cruising the Air New Zealand website. I went to the Air Dollars screen to just have a look around and see how readily available upgrade tickets on Air Dollars are. I plugged in a random date and clicked ‘Continue’ and got “Thank you for your request. The Air New Zealand Air Points centre will contact you within 24 hours to confirm your request.” YIKES!!! Nothing like loosing 900 Air Dollars on a tour! I’m sure all other times ‘Continue’ means ‘go to the next screen’ or ‘are you really really sure you want to proceed and make this purchase’ upon which you are presented with a ‘confirm’ button.

I then spent 18.25 minutes on hold with the Air Points centre (who quite rightly advised me that due to exceptionally heavy caller demand my call wouldn’t be answered for at least 5 minutes) to check that I was not going to be docked Air Dollars for a non-existent flight. The woman assured me that no Air Dollars had been redeemed. I still feel nervous though. I believe you can’t get an Air Dollar upgrade unless you have a ticketed economy ticket which I definitely don’t have so even if the Air Points Centre does contact me within 24 hours it’ll be to tell me that my request has been declined.

… strum strum … 21 hours to go …