So a while back I decided to apply for TSA Pre-Check to skip the lines when I fly. I do it enough that it feels like a luxury I won't waste.
I went down to a little office near the Seattle airport, forked over $90 and my fingerprints. A little while later, I got e-mail and snailmail welcoming me to the program, and giving me my Known Traveller Number, which is the ID for the thing.
This weekend, I went down to the airport for my first trip with my brand new shiny Known Traveller Number. I'd entered it in the form when I booked the ticket, and was expecting a little Pre-Check note to show up when the ticket got printed so I could go through the fast line.
It didn't.
I went to customer service and we tried looking for my name in the database. It wasn't there. I tried looking it up on the Pre-Check website (whose name of course has nothing to do with “Pre-Check” or “TSA”) but the wireless in the terminal was garbage, time was short, and I was stressed.
I gave up, and went through the long line with all the other schlubs. Went off and did my trip, had a good time, I'll be posting something about that soon.
Now I'm sitting in a bar in the airport, on my way home. There was a Pre-Check application office in the unsecured zone of the airport; I asked about my problem and all they could do was to give me a card with a number to call. I checked on the website and there it was, the exact same KTN that I had written down in Evernote.
I called the number. I get to the start of a hold queue, then it says “Goodbye” and disconnects.
It did this on multiple tries. Once I actually got into the hold queue for a while, then managed to hit the wrong button while trying to turn up the earphones, and hung up instead.
I would probably be pretty frustrated if I wasn't sipping a Mai Tai right now. I'm still frustrated enough to decide its best to give up on this before I get pissed enough to throw the phone through a wall or something.