People Don't Like to Be Told They're Wrong

Now this wasn't something that I dealt with personally but I thought I'd share it anyway. Some background to the story first! A woman comes into the movie, and had purchased tickets online. At the Guest Services counter, a fellow manager was attempting to retrieve here tickets for her. All you need to do (usually) is simply swipe their credit card. If that is in fact the card that was used, the tickets will print out. Occasionally, we do need to enter in numbers manually, but the tickets will still print out.

Unfortunately, after trying all of these methods, we could not retrieve her tickets. She did not have the confirmation page that prints out when you purchase tickets online (I believe), so we weren't really sure what to do. She purchased additional tickets, and went to go watch her movie. I'm sure that the other manager told her that if she got charged for the tickets then she could return and we would be glad to issue a refund. Traditionally, if we can't retrieve tickets, it's because the site didn't properly capture the data and did not charge the card. So things should be fine, correct?

Duh. Of course not. There would be no story without it! Anyway, her husband returns later on and is quite upset. It turns out that he was the one who had purchased the tickets, and he saw the confirmation page and everything. He hands us her card again, and we attempt to retrieve them again. No Dice. He's pretty upset, so the manager there calls for backup. Two of us head there, and we ask if that's the card that was used to purchase the tickets.

It turns out that it was not. The guest had used his own card on a linked account to purchase the tickets. However, his wife's card did not have the same credit card # on it! Linked bank cards do NOT have the same number... so it wasn't our fault we couldn't retrieve them. The card number was different, so the system did not recognize it! We did end up refunding the tickets onto the card, w/o the service charge (we don't charge that, the website does). However, the guest was still pretty insistent that the card #s were the same, and said that he would be sure to check it when he got home, not accepting our reasoning for the issue.

I don't understand how hard it is to accept something that you are wrong about if it solves the issue. I know that I am the same way sometimes, but I still can't figure it out! What explanations do you guys have? I'm no psych major or something like that... so I'd love to hear your responses!