cheaptickets.com Orbitz Insane refund policy and crappy customer service, Internet

My nephew is deploying to Afghanistan within the week.  Of course the Army doesn't tell you exactly when, they just give you a window - then as the deployment gets closer they give you a more precise departure.   My nephew asked me to fly to Fort Campbell, and drive his car back to Washington, D.C. and take care of it while he was deployed.  He loves the car, and I'm a good aunt, so I agreed. 

When he had a departure date, I purchased a one-way ticket through cheaptickets.com from DC to Nashville, schedule to arrive the day before his departure.  $350 for a one way isn't cheap, but it was the best I could do from National airport.  The nephew calls today and says the Army has moved the departure up by one day.  Great.  Now my flight has me arriving after he's already wheels up for Afghanistan.

I call cheaptickets customer service.  I know it's going to cost some money to change the flight, and I'm willing to eat the additional cost.  How bad can it be?  Here's how bad it can be:  $150 airline ticket change fee + $50 cheaptickets ticket change fee + the price difference between the old ticket and the new ticket.

Um, what?  You can't just charge me the difference between the old ticket and the new ticket, you have to charge me 200 bucks on top of that?  How does that make sense? You're charging me 200 dollars for the privilege of giving you even more money for the new ticket, and you think you're getting away with it because you're holding my original money hostage.  Screw that noise.

I went to another site, and bought a new ticket, and I'm eating the cost of the original ticket.  It would have cost me, by my calculation, an additional $500 to make the change, on top of the 350 I had already spent.  I got a new ticket for way less than $500 bucks using a different site.  I'm still out the 350, and I've got a bad taste in my mouth about cheaptickets and United and their failure to support the military.  (Yeah, it's indirect, but you know what?  My nephew is going to f*cking Afghanistan.  For the second time.  And he's only been back from Afghanistan for six months.  And he's not a REMF.  He's a full-on Ranger qualified infantryman going out to a forward operating base, not to sit around the f*cking Poo Pond at Kandahar Air Field.  And he wants me to drive his freaking car home to keep it safe.  So.)