Almost ruined my vacation, cost me $1,000 and 8 hours on the phone

Just wanted to share my Orbitz experience with the world.  6 months ago my girlfriend and I bought tickets for Costa Rica at a great price from Orbitz.  The only problem was that it was a multi-carrier ticket, which worried me.  Time passed.

Two days ago, only 12 days away from our trip, she received an email stating that United Airlines had canceled one leg of the trip.   I was never informed of the change strangely.  My gf called them and was told that we could get our money back or try to reschedule.  That night I called them and they told us they would put us on another flight, 2 DAYS LATER.  I told the nice call-center employee in India that this was unacceptable and that I wanted my money back.  She said that Orbitz could not authorize a refund, because “another carrier” had “picked up” our ticket.  #$$%^$^?

Turns out that LACSA Airlines, one of the legs of the trip, had someone “picked up” our ticket and now controlled it.  The rep called LACSA but they had no supervisors.  At this point we felt a sense of urgency because the trip was less than 2 weeks away and other tickets were already much more expensive.  Orbitz wouldn’t budge, then claimed that the LACSA office was closed for the night.  We hung up and called back, this time both of us at once, from two different phones.  My gf’s rep said she could refund the tickets again - more contradiction, but I’ll take it.  Meanwhile, I had got on with a “supervisor” who apparently had overwritten the other rep’s offer for a refund.  Now we were stuck- no refund authorization until LACSA reopened in the morning and responded.

The next morning was more hell with the call centers.  I spoke to three different reps, 2 supervisors, nobody could get a hold of LACSA and nobody would offer a refund.  At this point, I just wanted them to take care of their customer and offer a refund - they could go collect my money from LACSA or whoever they gave it to, but I put my trust in Orbitz and was dropped.  All they would do was quote policies - there is nobody at any of the call centers who can make an exception to the rules.

Their rules are terrible, their supervisors are powerless, they give contradictory information, and they “sell” your ticket to other companies.

In the end, I got my money back and bought two tickets through Continental, for an extra$1,100.  Thanks for nothing Orbitz - I spent over 7 hours on the phone with you, went through hell with your knowledgless reps, and almost doubled the cost of my trip, all to get you to do the right thing, to protect your customer, just as any small business in America would do in heartbeat.

I’ll never use Orbitz again - there’s too much good competition out there.  Long live Kayak.com

This entry was posted on December 18, 2008 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.