TIFU by booking a flight through a third-party service

And that's not even the worst part.

I've been looking for flights to a city where I'm going to see a concert in May and waiting for a good deal and decided to look tonight because I've read that Tuesdays/Wednesdays are good days to look for flights. Anyway, I checked the flights for my dates on Google flights and saw they had gone up a bit, so I decided to hold off for a bit longer (this strategy has worked for me pretty consistently in the past). When I re-checked just a few minutes later, I saw that the cheapest flight went down by ~$50, so I decided to go ahead and buy it. The cheapest option was through Budget Air and thinking nothing of it, I bought the tickets through them. While checking out, I saw the option to pay $10-$20 more to be able to cancel the booking free of charge. I seriously considered it, but then decided against it thinking I was for sure going to take the flight and not have to cancel.

Well, immediately after receiving the confirmation email and reviewing it, my heart dropped. The flight was an entire month earlier. No wonder the flight had gotten so much cheaper within a few minutes–it wasn't for the dates I was originally looking for! I immediately started talking to the chatbot for Budget Air and was hoping to at least not have to pay the cancellation fee considering I contacted them literally within a few minutes of making the booking, but nope. I had to either keep the booking or pay the cancellation fee of $110. All I could think in that moment was "how could I be so stupid?" First, I booked for the wrong dates, and then I didn't even pay for the option to not have to pay a cancellation fee.

Well, I got the bright idea to just contact the airline the flights were on. Originally I asked to cancel the booking, but thought about changing the booking to the actual dates I needed. The difference I would have to pay? $110. I couldn't help but shake my head and laugh to myself thinking it was some cruel joke. Anyway, they were able to help me out and give me a full refund for the booking–phew! I panicked a bit because the card number didn't match my physical card since I paid through Apple Pay, but they were still able to process the refund with the confirmation code. Hopefully, it'll hit my bank account soon so I can buy the flights for the CORRECT dates this time lol. Yes, it was fully my bad, but we live and we learn (to not buy flights in the middle of the night) 😅

TL;DR: I bought flight tickets through a third-party service for the wrong dates without realizing, contacted them immediately to no avail, then contacted the airline and was (thankfully) able to get a refund.