You seem to have taken offense to my story. Just wanted to point out that I specifically stated that I didn't think you acted out of line, but that sometimes customers do when faced with a situation they are not happy about, and that the customer is not always right, and that there are always two sides to every story. No need to put it "at a first grade level' as you stated, I understood your story and was relating a story of my own.

No, I would not be happy if my wife was treated this way.

However, you're home now. It's over. Yet you're still trying to contact the manager. For what? I am sure he knows what happened, as his staff has told him. You're not going back there, as you've stated. So what do you hope to gain by talking to the manager?

To play devils advocate, if I was told by a customer that they were leaving my country the next day, had no cash nor any access to cash, but here, take my credit card info, I might be skeptical that the charge would go through. You'd have plenty of time to cancel the card while waiting for systems to come back on line.

Hard for me to say how I'd handle it in Xtabi's shoes - if credit card systems were to go down I could very easily call my credit card processor and get a manual authorization - problem solved.

What did they do in times before electronic processing? Did they use the old fashioned imprint machine and hope for the best? My guess is credit card acceptance is relatively new and they never actually relied on the old-fashioned methods?