I have a history of spontaneous travel decisions, but usually it was about booking a flight last minute, not cancelling it. To make a short story long, I'll start at the beginning:

I had been thinking of visiting friends in the U.S. for quiet some time, again, and at the beginning of March I decided to book a flight and set a hard deadline to my thesis-writing. Unfortunately my band's next concert, scheduled for April 12th set another deadline for my return date. So on March 5th, I booked a flight online with Expedia. Departure today, return April 11th. 2 days later I received the booking confirmation and receipt from Expedia. Another 4 hours later I received another E-Mail which translates to something like

Subject: Credit card not accepted

Dear Mr... thanks for booking with Expedia.

Unfortunately we could not issue your flight tickets as the airline does not accept credit card payment for the booked rate, only invoice-payment. (dunno if that's correct english)
Unfortunately Expedia does not offer invoice-payment.

We ask for your understanding that we are unable to issue the tickets for your flight. The booking was not brought to effect.

The status of your itinerary was changed to "not reserved".

The itinerary has been deleted from your account.

regards,

xxxxxxxx <-- they really put those xxxxxxxx in the E-Mail. There was no signature

Your Expedia.de Team
Travel. How, when, where you want.

I must admit, that kind of surprised me. All I knew was Fuck Expedia.

Janine told me about a travel agency in Berlin she used to get tickets at: www.usareisen.de. I went to their website, found a form to search for flights, entered Berlin ↔ Baton Rouge and came up with results similar to those from Expedia, just cheaper. I was happy. So I booked right away and received a confirmation E-Mail.

Next day I received a phone call from that agency, Mr. Müller speaking. He wondered about the price I was offered and said it wasn't correct, they couldn't offer the booked flight at that price. It was the fault of the web-search-engine they use, he'll dig into it. Of course it wasn't my fault, he said, and I had received a confirmation, so I'd get the flight, someone else would have to pay the difference. Little later he called again. He had looked up different flights which were actually better (shorter layovers) and cheaper, too. I chose to book those; both of us were happy.

Three weeks passed by, I was totally stressed writing my thesis. It turned out I didn't get it done in time.

Yesterday evening, coming home from band-practice, I received an E-Mail from the friend I was going to stay with. He asked me not to come for something serious happened that would make neither of us enjoy the trip.

He's one of my best friends I could not think of anything that could have thrown him off track like this. I know him as a rock-solid guy, who of course has his worries, but he knows how to handle them. His mail didn't sound like that. I had to take the car back to my parents, called Janine on the way, talked to my parents about it. We all wondered what could have happened. At my parents' I checked my mail again. I'm not going into details here, but it turned out he got into huge trouble.Trouble that wasn't even his fault, never the less, there'd be no time to have a visitor around. I understand that.

So after all, I'm still at home. It's almost 2pm, my flight left at 8am. I talked to Mr. Müller on the phone.. he'll see what he can do about the money. But that's the least of my worries. I hope my friend will be all right. I wish I could help.