ORBITZ RUINED OUR 1 NIGHT in PARIS!

February 19, 2010 by JB212.

My boyfriend and I were fortunate enough to be able to spend a night in Paris, France this past September.  We thought it would be romantic and everything that we had imagined it to be.  WRONG!  Why?  Because we booked with Orbitz!  We get to the hotel that we made a reservation for, fill in check-in info and then are told that the hotel is full…but that there is a hotel down the street that will take us.  This already seems a bit shady to us and we demand that we not be moved, as we spent much time debating which the perfect hotel would be for a night in Paris, and were not too pleased to be moved.  The host gets rude and hostile with us and tells us that if we do not take the other hotel we can leave.  So we get to the other hotel and tell them that the host at the other place sent us over, and they tell us that they already have a room prepared.  Seems a bit shady…considering we made a clear decision to book a specific hotel on Orbitz.  Better yet, we are treated like they are doing us a favor, and the bathroom shower drain is completely clogged up and full of water. DISGUSTING!  We complain about it…but nothing gets done.  This is only half the complaint.  Our only night in Paris was completely ruined by a frustrating, disgusting situation.

So you would assume that Orbitz would treat customer complaints seriously, right?  I mean especially if you give them your credit card and have them charge you for a specific hotel.  I mean…would you pay the price of a Mercedes, if you knew that last second the car salesman pulls out a Toyota with defective brakes, and says…”I have no more Mercedes cars, but here is a Toyota…and you already were charged for the price of the Mercedes.” You would probably avoid a situation like this.  To the same degree, you should avoid Orbitz.  We complained to Orbitz right away, at which point our complaints were completed ignored, and we were told we should have called while we were in Paris. With which phone should we have called?  Ohh..and would they have paid the charge?  Probably not!  Hmm…and waste even more time…I think not.  We expected Orbitz to handle this like a company that cares about the customer.

After this, I call up American Express, and demand that the charge be frozen, as Orbitz did not keep up with its part of the contract.  This gets better…This was in September.  Now it’s February, and Orbitz has the audacity to call me up and demand that I pay or have my bill be given to debt collectors, which will hurt my credit.  I tell them again the situation, and they say, “The hotel did not claim you had any complaints.”  Which hotel are you talking about Orbitz?  The one that we booked…or the one we were forced to move into on a makeshift basis with clogged bathtub?  It’s funny how Orbitz is willing to take the side of the hotel, and tell me, “the hotel won’t refund us because they said you had no complaints, so therefore we need to charge you, and if you refuse to pay, we will report you.”  We have pictures to prove that the bathroom was clogged, which we sent to Orbitz, but were ignored.

How about this Orbitz…why don’t you listen to your customers once in a while, especially those that have used you in the past?  There’s a marketing concept…If a company (i.e. Orbitz) treats a customer unfairly, the customer will tell nearly 20 people about their negative experience.  When a company treats a customer well, the customer will only tell 5 people about their positive experience.  What’s the moral of the story?  When a customer complains, take it seriously, and don’t attempt to bully them and make excuses.  Ohh…and one more thing…Hire people that understand this theory.

I hope this gives everyone a nice little taste of what booking something with Orbitz is like.

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