Just booking some flights for a trip to Burma/Myanmar.

Flight Centre sorted it and sent some kind of electronic link thingy that takes you to a page which shows the invoice and the itinerary.

You approve them, select how you will pay and press 'accept'.

From that point you can never re-visit the page (although it does not tell you that at the time) so you can no longer read the itinerary or see the invoice.

My wife approved the forms and selected payment by bank transfer. A message thanked her and then said the consultant would be in touch with bank account details.

That was Friday morning.

Today a call comes saying that the flights cannot be held as payment has not been received. We point out that we are waiting for bank details. They say they were on the invoice, we tell them their system no longer permits us to view the invoice and neither has it copied us with it.

No problem they say - we'll take a credit card if you add 2%. No thanks - we will pay by EFTPOS assuming no surcharge applies. 

No thanks we say - we will do bank transfer. No can do, flights cannot be held.

End result they end up losing a $4100 booking.....all because their IT system is bizarre and they are completely inflexible.