TAP Portugal web site now hanging same on firefox as chromium

Yesterday, I was unable to book a ticket using either firefox or chromium on flytap.com.

The way it failed for a password reset on chromium was different from how it failed on firefox.  This morning, the way it's failing on firefox is the same: after entering the email address, it goes into an animation, with more animations happening in the grayed-out background, and never progresses.


I checked out as a guest, and used the Austria card, so I could select a cardholder address from the list Afghanistan - Bermuda (it's a bit different this time -- I guess the truncation point depends on the exact size of my browser window).

There's realtime SMS reception required for the card payment, and by the time the SMS arrives, the payment page says I'm out of time.  Never mind, there's a button to try again, and now the SMS has arrived.  But the "try again" button just brings up a blank page under a domain I've never heard of:


Look at all this shitfrastructure working together!  It all depends on the other shitfrastructure, and none of it works.  Payment cards, mobile phones and mobile phone networks, email, airlines, and everyone's web site.  They all don't work to start with, and then they're "integrated" together in ways that increase the fragility still further, to the point where it's almost guaranteed that the thing you're trying to do, will not work.

I go back to flytap.com's front page and start again.  There is no sign of a shopping cart to just restart the payment.  It remembers some of the information, but not others.

This time I notice, as I'm re-entering the date again, that in their calendar, in which days of the week of not labelled, Sundays have changed from being on the right-hand side of each row, to being on the left-hand side.  Is this random each time?  The web site language is in Portuguese again, and the default trip is return not single, again.  I'm basically entering everything from scratch, again.  Of course, it has to hassle me about "cookie consent", but they then don't use these cookies for anything useful, like remembering the language, or the shopping cart.

I decide to try creating a new flytap.com account with a different email.  But I am unable to enter my date of birth.  The year field has the same problem as the country field on the payment page previously.  The available years from the drop-down (three clicks to bring it up each time) are 2021-2003.  There is no way to scroll down the list further -- that's it.  So I give up on this tack.

I try some other booking web sites, but they're complete garbage, and I decide to try flytap.com again.  The price has gone up 10%.  Maybe this is because the previous booking is on hold.

After entering everything again, sometimes multiple times again, using extremely tedious inputs, I'm back at the payment, and this time the SMS arrives straight away.  The domain handling the payment is one I've never heard of, which is the wrong way to do payments, but this seems to be universal.

After entering the SMS code I get.. a blank page.  Another blank page.  I have no idea if the payment went through or if the flight is booked.


I check my email and my "booking is on hold until payment is completed".

Oh, there's another  "booking is on hold until payment is completed" from the earlier attempt, with the old price.  But these emails don't say how one would go about trying the payment again.  It just says "Use these details to pay for your flight", followed by "card type: visa" and "Name: Tom Jones" and "Total: 4242.43 BRL".  I guess I'd have to do a web search if I wanted to try paying for this booking that's on hold?



I try calling TAP in Rio on 0800 727 2347, but this apparently won't work within whatever roaming is happening on my mobile.  I try (+351) 211 234 400 via SIP / VoIP.  The first attempt fails with an error in the SIP client.  I guess Claro are successfully blocking VoIP from working still on this account.  I switch to the other SIP account and manage to call.  There are huge menus in Portuguese.  At some point there is an option to switch to English, but pressing 2 doesn't work (DTMF signalling over SIP almost never works).  Eventually, someone does answer.  It's not clear whether he can't hear me or just doesn't want to speak to me, but the conversation never gets going.  Eventually he gives up and I'm back in recorded phone menus.

I follow the link "See everything that is included in your trip" from the email.  It does have information about the attempted booking.  But no way to pay.  It's just presented as a booking:


How do I pay?

I've now spent more than the equivalent of one full working day "working on" trying to buy a ticket.  Am I just uniquely retarded, or incompetent at admin, or does NOTHING FUCKING WORK?

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