I was booking a DFW - PHL flight on Orbitz when I noticed that the drop-down menu for countries in the billing address section for credit cards includes “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” but no “Republic of Korea.” Somewhat disconcerted, I went ahead and used that for my address and my card was validated and charged, but I thought it was odd so I emailed Orbitz about it.
Here’s what I got as a reply:
So I email them again:
And I get this reply:
:dubious:
My reply:
I think Orbitz is secretly working for Kim Jong Il, trying to prevent any South Koreans from traveling to that evil land that is the USA. Whaddya think?
Maybe their Customer Service folk are the IT department of my uni? These people have been known to answer “please allow subtitling students to install a subtitling program” with “multimedia programs are classified as inane”.
The responses make me think they may have a limited list of possible answers, “Tier-1 Support Style”.
For some reason, this story made my early-morning. At first I thought you were talking about the gum, but the actuality is even funnier. I wonder if a robot is generating those replies.
You should keep replying and complaining until you get a sensible response
There might actually be some people in the NK elite who do have credit cards (I remember reading something about that once in Rodong Sinmun actually), though why they’d have to use Orbitz to book tickets online is beyond me.
Actually, I suspect some idiot in charge of putting in the names for the drop-down list switched the names around, figuring that the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” is obviously the Good Korea. And then you got some other idiot entirely who didn’t interpret the problem correctly.
The fact that warning bells should sound at the mention of the words “democratic” and “people’s republic” in a country’s name should be covered in civics classes.
Some people (and organizations) are too dumb to help.
(Our son was adopted from Korea. That would be South Korea. The number of people who ask “North or South” amazes me. I still cannot keep that sort of “you must be kidding or are you that dumb” look off my face when I say “South, they don’t let people OUT of North Korea - its a repressive dictatorship.”)
The human rights record of a country is inversely related to the number of superlatives they use. If there’s ever a People’s Glorious Beneficial Cooperative Democratic Republic of Bleechistan, run far, far away.
Romania was probably a bit less repressive, although they were among the worst at times. You hear about adoption from there because they had a serious surfeit of orphaned babies - thanks to Ceauşescu’s anti-birth control and population measures.
Heh. At work, I’ve had several obviously-weary-but-polite exchange students tell me “I’m from Korea. …South Korea, not North.” Trying to pre-empt the question. (And I wouldn’t ask, I promise!)
