America...oh the joy

As many of you know, I am in America for a few weeks. Due to both personal and work related reasons, I tried to get back to Beijing earlier and figured I could just "easily change my flight." I booked my flight originally on a website that had Captain Kirk promising to do to fares what he did to the Klingons...zap 'em! However, I would rather clean up every tribble off an international space station than have to deal with their customer "service" call center again.
I call the website and I get rerouted to what I call the computer maze.
The customer support people don't want to actually talk to anyone, God forbid, so they force their customers, like mice, to go through mazes.

An overly cheerful female computer answers on the first ring.
Thank you for calling GeneriTrip, where you can save up to .004% on airfare, hotels and car rentals every day! How may I help you today?
Press 1) for English
Press 2) for Spanish
In Soviet Russia...Number presses you!

I press one

Press 1) for airline reservations
Press 2) for car rental
Press 3) for hotel reservations
Press 4) for your itinerary
Press 5) to hear a duck quack

Again I press one. Again I get the cheerful fem-bot.

Thank you for booking with GeneriTrip! For staff entertainment purposes, this call may be monitored and recorded. To assure we have the highest level of customer service and to better assist you, please enter the 16 digit confirmation code in the lower middle upper right hand of the email you deleted 3 weeks ago followed by your high school locker combination and mothers pet name for your father on nights when she's had too much sherry.

Fortunatly, I don't delete anything and after a few false starts, I am able to enter in the information and am told to "please wait and the next available customer service representative will help you."
So I wait.
and wait.
I hear "Whole Lotta Love" done entirely on strings. I hear what sounds suspiciously like the Star Wars theme done, elevator style.
I wait some more and I hear Captain Kirk tell me about all the awesome things GeneriTrip can do for my next trip. Book Today! Oh wait, you're on our hold line...yeah, hahah, good luck buddy.

Finally a guy who is a dead ringer for Abu from The Simpsons answers.

Long story short,they said it would be a $250 fee plus the difference in the tickets. Ouch, but whatever OK, I'll pay that. I just want to get this over with. So I say i want to leave anywhere between the 18th and the 24th (3 days on either side of the 21st, the date I want to leave) and he was like "ok no problem lets find you a flight." 20 minutes on hold (again) later, he says all of those days are completley booked. I said you have GOT to be kidding me...you're telling me there is a great exodus of people leaving from Baltimore to go to Beijing in the end of May? At this point, I detected a bit of sarcasm in his heavily acccented voice.
"No sir, but there is a lot of people going from SAN FRANCISCO to Beijing and considering how you're flying into SF first, that might be an issue."
It was at this point, i was really hoping his was one of those "your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes" calls because he was the furtherst thing from helpful. So then I said, "Ok travel guy, rumor has it more than one city gets flights in from BWI and also goes to Beijing...can I get one of those? Literally anywhere, LA, Seattle, Vancouver, London, Timbuktu?"
No, he says.
Not just sorry sir, or let me check but straight up no.
Care to explain? say I
"Yeah you're flying with continental which is being absorbed by United, so right now CON flights out of the east coast are flying to west coast hubs before they go to asian destinations."
Ok, so any other airline?
"You would have to book it with them, genius."
Yeah, i guess i should have figured that one out.

So then he says, wait i found a flight out of SF that would get into Beijing at 5am on May 26, is that ok?
YES YES FOR THE CATHOLIC LOVE OF MARY THAT IS WHAT I WANT! How much?
The price differential is $1,100 and add in the $250 surcharge for changing your flight and that comes to $1,350 plus taxes and government fees.

Whhaaaaa? thats more than my original flight!

I'm sorry sir, but flights have seen an increase in prices in the last few weeks. May I assist you with anything else today?


No thanks Abu...
*click*