Travel Agents, Online -Orbitz.com Orbitz.com has no customer service

Orbitz.com has NO customer service

Travel Agents, Other

From:

Date: Thursday, July 05, 2001 01:38 PM Sent To: Email User 7/5/2001 1:38:32 PM I did not see a category for Orbitz.com as a travel

agency - online. I just had a terrible customer

service experience with them. On June 16th, I made an online reservation and

purchased two tickets from Miami to Seattle and back.

After I had completed the purtchase, I realized that I

had chosen the wrong MIA - SEA segment flight

combination - it gave me a three hour layover in

Chicago whereas I had intended to pick one which would

have given me only an hour's layover in Chicago. I have made a similar mistake before with Continental

Airlines' website and I called them and they made the

change promptly and with no charge. I thought I would do the same with Orbitz - what a

mistake! I currently live in Venezuela so the 800

numbers do not work - I pay for all calls from my own

pocket. I called them and the recording told me that

I had a ten minute wait period - after waiting 15

minutes, I hung up. That call cost me about ten

dollars. Then, I wrote an e-mail to the Customer Care

address thinking that they would resolve my problem.

I got an auto acknowledgement saying that I would

receive a reply in four hours - no reply ever arrived.

I wrote another e-mail a couple of days later - no

reply. I tried calling them and the same wait.

That's twenty dollars that I had spent trying to reach

them. I then received an e-mail reply telling me to call. I

wrote again saying that I did not wish to spend more

money waiting on hold and whether they could resolve

my problem on-line. No reply. I finally wrote the

last e-mail about four days ago. No reply as of yet.

Each time, I have written an e-mail, I do get an auto

acknowledgement saying they will reply in four hours

but nothing after that. I called them today (at my expense from Venezuela) -

the customer service rep. told me that it was my fault

for not reaching them earlier and there was nothing

they could do now without rebooking the flight. I

told her that I had repeatedly tried to reach them and

she said again that they are a new site and were

overwhelmed with e-mails and phone calls and I should

have just held on - "even if it took two hours"!!! She

said that it was my fault for not selecting the

flights correctly. When I told her that I would not

use their service to buy tickets anymore, rather I

would just research fares and buy the tickets

somewhere else - she said that only Orbitz has these

fares and I could not get them from the airlines nor any other website.

Sounds like the monopoly that people are

calling them! I finished my call by saying that I received a

terrible customer service experience and would never

again purchase from them again. She told me bye and

to have a nice day.