25 September 2007

Travelocity Sucks: Boycott Travelocity

In many ways, web-based travel reservation companies such as Expedia have proven to be a great advantage for people who book their own airline, hotel, and car rental arrangements. Of the many web-based travel agents, Travelocity is among the very worst. Graphic below from www.travelocitysucks.info )




After several minor screw-ups and one particularly egregious gouging, I join the ranks of those who say Travelocity Sucks and Boycott Travelocity.

On a recent trip to Bradford, Pennsylvania (for a family funeral), daughter Emily flew in from Boston to the closest major airport in Buffalo, New York. Because her flight back to Boston was to leave at the butt-crack of dawn, we decided to book a hotel near the airport on short notice. Finding a reservation was tough, but one Travelocity "near the airport" hotel had vacancies, and so I booked it. Yikes! My mistake, as I found when I tried to map directions--it was in Fort Erie, which to my surprise I found to be in Canada. With no passports, we could not stay there.

We immediately tried to cancel online and through Travelocity suck's "customer service" (Hah!) line. After being put on hold three times for a half hour or more at a time, and shuffled from operator to operator, we gave up. We called the hotel directly, but were told that since it was booked through Travelocity sucks we would need to deal with it through Travelocity sucks. After returning home, emails seeking a refund brought only automated, semi-anonymous replies (you can never speak or email with the same agent twice, it seems) that it was the hotel's fault and no refund was available.

What a bunch of weasels.

"Travelocity Sucks" cf. http://scribb.typepad.com/marketonomy/2005/12/customer_experi.html; http://www.aftertastebliss.com/archives/natelog/2006/01/travelocity_suc.php; and http://www.my3cents.com/showReview.cgi?id=17334)

"Boycott Travelocity" cf. http://www.scrapbook.com/blogs/36517/view/15035.html; http://www.epinions.com/content_369755065988/show_~allcom; and http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/126/RipOff0126276.htm)

50 comments:

Anonymous said...

well...ummm...I went to travelocitysucks.com and there was a total of one, yes ONE comment in all of the six or seven forums.

A review of the actual site should be conducted before posting a link. You might have well just sent us to a file-not-found website, Pat.

pretty small sample size to base a decision on...makes me not want to waste my time looking at the other links (but then again I suppose I shouldn't make that conclusion based on a web-site sampling on one)

Cranky old man

EcoRover said...

Well jeepers creepers there, Anonymouse aka "Cranky," I found numerous comments and they are posted at numerous sites (which is why a posted a number of links). Many unhappy customers, like me, post just a single comment at a single site. And the bottom line is that my experience with Travelocity Sucked, and I found it confirmed in other similar experiences. This adds up to quite a few comments, actually...

Anonymous said...

Yes! Travelocity Sucks BAD! I called a week or more just to check on changing my flight, they called Delta and called me back, I said "nevermind I will keep my reservation" got to the airport for my flight and they informed me that I had cancelled it!! 4 hours on the phone with Travelocity and I was informed that they could get me on a flight and it was only going to cost me $600.00. I freaked. They finally decided to pay for the flight. I was in fact charged for the flight that they cancelled. I FINALLY spoke to a supervisor (who barely spoke English) and he yelled at me that I should have to pay for the original flight. (they lost my luggage coming and going) ruined soo many of my plans and meeting people at the airport ect. I have received an email that someone will get backk to me in a couple of weeks. This was a Christmas flight and now it is the end of January and still nothing from Travelocity! I tell EVERYONE what crap this company is and never NEVER use them. They need to at least speak English. And when they screw up your plans you should not have to pay for the flight!!!

Anonymous said...

Test

Anonymous said...

TRAVELOCITY SUCKS!! I agree 100%! I can not believe that any company can do the amount of false advertising that they do and get away with it. They do not guarantee low prices and they do not have anyone in customer service or customer relations that can speak english! I was trying to book a flight and I found an advertised flight through Travelocity. As I went through the process and got to the point of actually booking, it says the price is no longer available. It had changed by a few hundred dollars. When you call and ask, all you get is a run around. I wonder what customer service they are talking about. In my mind there is no customer service. I strongly urge people NOT to use Travelocity! Let's Boycott!

Anonymous said...

hey guys just wanted to ask how much time you really have on your hands? i mean not only to create an entire website which looks like noone goes on anyway at least not more then four people plus myself but then to actually take the time to find a website to complain about a travel organization. did you think of maybe opening this site to be able to collect comments from all travel sites and not just from travelocity? just saying. hey and how about the many organizations that travelocity and other travel companies actually comtribute to. i myself choose not to book with travelocity and i do use it like a search engine also but every click that you make on the website actually generates money on travelocity so have fun using it for a search engine aswell.

Anonymous said...

I was just majorly screwed over by Travelocity this morning. I spent nearly a grand for a ticket from Minneapolis to Long Island. US Air canceled its flight this morning. No big deal I thought. I will just call customer service and find an alternative flight, if not into Long Island then into one of the many airports in the New York area.

After eons on the phone with customer service, Travelocity tells me that it wil rebook my flight to arrive into Long Island the next day late in the evening. I miss a full day of my 1.5 day conference as a result.

I politely asked if I could just get into New York from Minneapolis. They and US Air refused to book this flight even though Travelocity's own web site shows seats available.

I fly about 100K miles per year. If you book a ticket directly through an airlines website, the airline is much less likely to screw you over (although it stil can happen). Never again for sites like Travelocity. You can't even rebook to get into a major area like New York if your flight is canceled.

A major rip of- they don't care if they leave the consumer hanging.

Anonymous said...

travelocity sooo does suck. my sis was supposed to come back up from Jamaica and her flight was cancelled because of a hurricane and for travelocity to book her another flight, they charged my father $200 and then her flight in jamaica was delayed and when she arrived in florida to transfer to a flight to new york, it had already left. then when my father got on the phone with them, they said its gonna cost him another $150!!! it would of been better to just book with the airlines. they are a bunch of CROOKS!!!

Anonymous said...

6 hours, 3 transfers, 6 customer service reps, repeated story & requests as if no one had any idea what I was talking about, all to change travel plans due to Hurricane Ike = sucks. Dont think because others are not posting that this problem is not endemic.

Unknown said...

I have spoke with them 5 times to confirm a flight each time I get an email saying they cannot procees the reservation. I give them the same information each time I call. Just now they said there was a $29.95 fair increase! I called the airline and they have been asking Travelocity for information that is never provided. Travelocity blames the airline. Outsourcing stinks in so many ways!! You can not even understand the people you are speaking with!!From now on I will make my reservations the old fashioned way in English and by myself.

Anonymous said...

Here is a good one for you about their credit card through Barclays UK. Recently, in Houston we had a hurricane. I called travelocity mastercard and received a $500 credit increase above credit limit. I was in mandatory evac. zone. They did not say anything about bringing the balance below the credit line. They waived the first month's payment (which I made anyway). What they did is unbelievable. They charged me for being over the credit lime and jacked my APR up to 25%. I called them and spoke to many people mostly in Phillipines then finally got an American. He put me on hold while he checked on lowering my interest rate. He came back with this sad sounding voice and said sorry I went round and round with them but we can only lower it by 2 points. TRAVELOCITY MASTERCARD SUCKS TOO

My original room when I got the card was nothing close to the 4 star rating that it showed. The air in the hallways did not work. It the room was a little better. It has been downhill since in the last year.

Anonymous said...

December 20, 2008

Booked through Travelocity (Nov 13, 2008) fly dates - Dec 20th from Pdx to DIA Dec 27th from DIA to Pdx
Flight cancelled due to weather at PDX
Frontier (counter at the airport) told us to call Frontier and we could rebook for Monday, Dec 22
I Used my phone to call Travelocity and Carlos’ phone to call Frontier – on hold with Travelocity for about 20 minutes before I could get a CS rep and on hold with Frontier for about an hour before I could get a CS rep. Travelocity told me that they would call Frontier; I told them that I was on hold with Frontier and they would have a long wait. She tried anyway and then came back and told me that since there was such a long wait, that I would have to call back later when they could get this resolved.
Got through to Frontier – WOW - Next available flight out for any airline -- according to Frontier – Friday, Dec 26!!!
Frontier said they would refund our money for the original flight to DIA, but since the flight back was from United, they could not refund that.
Looked up the terms of my travel insurance with Travelocity, called Berkley (who is actually AIG – uh-oh) and they tell me that they are there for medical and emergencies, not for trip cancellation due to weather. They said I would have to call Travelocity.
OK, called Travelocity – they have obviously outsourced – got “James”, he told me to call Berkley. Told him I did. They told me to call Travelocity. He kept on insisting that I would have to call Berkley, finally when I asked to talk to his supervisor, he put me on hold, then came back and told me that he would have to call Frontier. I told him I called Frontier and was on hold for almost an hour, and he would be too. That when I called Travelocity the first time, they told me that since they would have been on hold for so long, that I would have to call back. He said he would call them anyway and could he put me on hold for about 5 minutes. Sure, whatever. WOW, came back on and said they had a very long wait. DUH!!!!!!! They could not refund my money. Frontier would have to refund my money and they would have to refund my money from United too. Because I booked through Frontier. Hmmmmmmmm thought I booked through TRAVELOCITY……………. What a crock. “James” told me that they would get a hold of Frontier and get the refund, and then they would let me know in 2 -3 business days what the upshot is.

December 21, 2008
Talked to Cheyenne at Frontier, she actually spoke American (since they are based in Denver and do not outsource). How impressive in this day and age. I told her my whole sad frustrating story. She said Frontier booked the whole ticket, so she thinks there is not a problem, but wants to check with a supervisor just to make sure. Not a problem she says when she gets back on the line. I can rebook in the next year, or I can get a refund. She is waiving the rebooking fee since it was them who cancelled in the first place, even though it was due to weather.

Upshot, never book with any service, just go through the airlines directly.

Anonymous said...

I called travelocity customer service the morning of my trip to have the trip cancelled because I was sick. The customer service representative told me he had cancelled the trip. Got a call the next day from travelocity asking if I wanted to change my hotel reservation since I didn't check-in. I explained that I called the previous day and was told the reservation had been cancelled. I was told by this agent that I need to call Travelocity Customer Service to cancel my reservation. I called again and was told that, according to the note, I had "changed my mind" so no cancellations had been made. I am on hold (15 minutes now) trying to speak to a supervisor. Buyer beware. This was my first time usinf Travelocity and it is my last - a very expensive mistake.

Anonymous said...

On May 2008 I used travelocity.ca for the first time to book three flights to South America.
Before anyone asks, I did not use travelocity.com, I have the printouts to prove that I booked on travelocity.ca.

When I get my credit card statement I notice two things:
1. The booking fee was USD$11 instead of CAD$9
2. They charged me for the tickets in USD instead of Canadian.
This conversion to US funds carries service fees which totaled more than $120.

When I called customer service they directed me to email them the details which I did. After several weeks waiting for a reply I was told that they could not open the attachments so I had to fax
everything which again I did promptly. After several more months waiting they replied that their records show me booking on travelocity.com so there is nothing they can do. They just ignored the pages I sent them proving that I booked on travelocity.ca not travelocity.com.

I will never use travelocity again.

Anonymous said...

I agree 100% and horrible service one can imagin. This company sucks your money even more to use the dirty cheap labour who are NOT trained at all, and hardly even to understand their English...

Anonymous said...

Jan 09
DO NOT USE TRAVELOCITY
We tried to book a simple flight. Choose the flight, seating, gave my information, hit complete, when all of a sudden UP POPPED (ERROR) We are experiencing technical difficulties, please check back later or re-enter information. So I went back to re-enter my information, hit complete and UP POPPED (ERROR WE CAN NOT PROCESS YOUR CARD INFORMATION) Spoke with my bank. The first flight info entered had a hold on my money. With no confirmation or trip id#. The second try could not go thru because the monies were being held. They tried to charge me twice for tickets and never gave me completed information etc travel trip id#. All information was cleared with the bank. I spoke with Travelocity who said neither trip was fully booked. So it was a wash. I was told to try again. With everything cleared up I went and tried again. Got the same Error message, so I called. They didn't seem to understand my problem and what just happened AGAIN. They said my trip info did not go thru. So I said well can I do it over the phone with you. They said yes. Only I would be charged a fee of $25 more a ticket. I said NO, I am not calling you because I want to book over the phone with you! I am calling you because you are having technical difficulties with your web page and this is the 3rd time today it has happened. Well, he waved the fee after me yelling about it (what happened to accomodating the customer and due to the situation deciding to wave that fee on their own) went ahead a processed the tickets. Only for me to get a call from the bank because the first flight info was trying to process along with the info the man had just entered! What a bunch of morons who don't know how to do their jobs. He clearly saw the flight info I was trying to book, he said he could not complete it, he would have to start a new one. Well it was processing then his processed again trying to charge me twice! Hopefully straightened out so that we can enjoy our trip! Without another $20 charge for the other flight not being cancelled. You tell me how can 3 people be on the same flight 4xs???? Stop outsourcing our customer service! Get REAL help!

Anonymous said...

Let me tell you, they sure do suck.
I was a nice guy and purchased tickets for family to take a trip to AZ.
I had to speak with an agent for 2 hours. She screwed up the flight info,so she canceled it out and had to do it again.
My husband checked our checking account to find that they also took out money that we did not authorized. We called the company and spoke to three different agents; whom all of them spoke such broken English that it was very difficult to under stand what they said,they told him that we would have to fill out a summary and fax or e mail them, since they do not have a phone line in there customer care area.
I got lucky and one of the agents got my bank rep on the line and she came to find out several charges were not authorized. I have to fill more paper work out to get my money back, now I am out money, have over draft fees and wasted like 10 hours of my life on these people. I am telling you what a rip off. I would rather freaken walk to AZ from here than deal with those people again!

chuckles said...

Well ditto here.... Tryin to fly my girl from Detroit to Omaha. Can't pay for her bags. nohow noway. Travelocity said go through nwa. Nwa said normally I could do this, but since I went through the fuck'n gnome(those weren't his exact words), I'm not allowed that option on their website. I'm staring at 7 credit cards that I can use everyday online, offline, on the phone, at a strip club, at a convenience store, ebay, anywhere, but not to pay for her baggage claim, through either company. WHAT A FUCKING CROCK OF SHIT!!!!

Anonymous said...

Follow HateTravelocity on Twitter and help save other people from these types of experiences. I want to get more followers than the actual Travelocity site. They have 2,300+ so join today.

http://twitter.com/HateTravelocity

Also leave a comment on Yelp.com

Anonymous said...

This actually happened. (Changed script for humor)

"Hello, Travelocity? I want to keep my plane tickets, but cancel my hotel reservation. I know the hotel's policy is to charge 25 dollars for cancellation. I'll happily pay the fee."

"Uh, no, we can't do that. We can change your hotel though!"

"... OK, you can change the hotel, thus canceling with the current one, but you can't just cancel it outright?"

"Nope."

"OK, cancel the whole damn thing then."

"400 dollars, please."

"... uh, no. Full refund. I'll book new flights through you right now."

"Nah."

"... okay. Thanks for being so accommodating."

Never, ever using Travelocity again.

Zeromod said...

Tothe last poster (script changed again for more accurate depiction)

"Uh hello Travelocity, I didn't bother to read any of the terms or penalties in the trip I booked and want to just go ahead and break all of them and waste your resources"

"Eh No we can't keep doing this forever besides even when we do go above and beyond and break contracts with partners and airlines you end up bad mouthing us anyway because you are part of that percentage of the world that is stuck in this endless cycle of being a douche to everyone"

"This is bullshit blah blah blah more yelling and degrading of someone who is simply doing their job, (insert racism here if you are speaking to someone not in the states or someone who is IN the states but has an accent) "

"Meh you know what you are just like the last guy who I took a loss of revenue on because I felt bad for him, but then he turned around and felt he could get more from the situation and burned us so NO fuck you..you know kindly of course."

Unknown said...

To the last poster:

Travelocity is horrible and I did not see anything racist about his post. Outsourcing has serious effects. All of those who posted have had real problems with Travelocity, as I have myself. Do you realize that these agents ARE NOT DOING THEIR JOBS!! And that is why so many people hate Travelocity enough to post something; I think people have a right to know when a service or site is screwing over the consumer.

Anonymous said...

I used travelocitySUCKS for a hotel in Ohio last week. I needed to change the reservation to the same hotel company but on the other side of town, so i called the hotel and was told they had rooms. After speaking with a travelocity sucks rep in India, i suppose, I was put on hold for 30 mins. only to be told to call back in the morning, presicely when my flight was leaving. I got to them in the morning, back on hold,had to disconnect. Found out when i landed that they cancelled my res, without booking me another room. refunds will take 3/4 billing cycles. Not to mention 499.00 for my room i had to get myself. It would help if someone there actually spoke ENGLISH!

Anonymous said...

Travelocity charged me my "travel protection" cost for adding a car to the trip which I initially reserved in the first package that I was SUPPOSED to be getting anyway. I emailed and called the CEO directly Hugh.Jones@travelocity.com and got some crappy precanned message. Then I called to just check on my reservations and their automated system said that my entire trip was not found. When I tried to cancel everything b/c I no longer has faith in their system, they said I would be charged $467 for penalties. So much for their travel protection. What a colossal joke. Don't EVER use Travelocity. They are bait and switch masters. I ended up overpaying $300 for my trip within 2 hours of getting their "guaranteed lowest price" on the site. Shame on Hugh for not caring about his customers.

Anonymous said...

I wanted to cuss out travelocity so badly when I talked to them on the phone. My family booked a flight for my mom and I to come visit them, however it turned out that my mom and I had to leave earlier than our flight had planned. When we called to make changes, they kept getting confused and we ended up talking to the manger. The whole time they kept thinking we wanted to change a name, not the leaving time. So I sat on the phone for 1_1/2 hours and my mom was on for another 2 hours. We ended up having to pay loads of extra money, even though we had travel protection. I was so frustrated with the so call "customer service" that I wanted to rip my hair out. My family that planned the trip for my mom and I are going to learn never to use travelocity again. So a word of advice: DON"T EVER USE STUPID TRAVELOCITY!!!! If you want to book a flight go to somewhere like kayak.com, cheap, and easy. I just can't trust a company who keeps transferring me, causing me to explain my story over and over. So please, before you spend money on travelocity, consider another website or company.

Anonymous said...

Yes...they SUCK!!!!!
I had a flight scheduled from Grand Junction, CO to San Diego through Denver. A major winter storm shut Denver down and consequently my flights had to be delayed a day. I suspected this was going to be the case when I woke up on the day of the originally scheduled flight so I checked the airlines web site for the flight status. It was canceled. I called Travelocity to reschedule - the customer service rep I spoke to "Ricky" (who clearly was not anywhere near the United States)says he checked with the airline and the flight was still scheduled to go - IT WAS NOT!!! It was F***ing CANCELED - it was on the airlines up to date web site. What an idiot this guy was. I could go on and on about their incompetence. Now I have to wait 30 days for a refund.

Unknown said...

They suck..

I will never never recommend any of my friends used their serive.

No flexibility in change or rescheuduling flight...

Damn!!!!!

Unknown said...

Given so many negative comments against them online..I wonder why they don't close down.

I regret i didn't do my homework enough before dealing with them.

I curse them.. this is not supposed the way they do business!!!

Dan said...

Travelocity screwed me over back in 2006. I was getting set and ready to fly out of Honolulu, on terminal leave from the Navy. I got to the Aloha Airlines counter, and they had no record of me having booked a flight. Because of that, I had to pay for an expensive flight on top of what I'd already paid!

Don't book with Travelocity, or support media outlets that run those cocksuckers' advertising!

Anonymous said...

YES!!! AGREED BOYCOTT TRAVELOCITY SOMEONE START A FACEBOOK PAGE

BOYCOTT TRAVELOCITY NOW!!!

AND WE CAN BRING THE IDIOTS DOWN! Their Customer Service is atrocious, and they FALSELY ADVERTISE....THEY THINK THEY ARE UNTOUCHABLE>>>treat their cistomers like crap-TAKE THESE LOSERS DOWN!!MAKE THEM ACCOUNTABLE TO CONSUMERS NOW!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

BOYCOTT TRAVELOCIY NOW!!!! FACEBOOK PAGE
MAKE IT AND WE WILL JOIN IT!!!

Anonymous said...

I scheduled a flight for three of us to California only to find out that they scheduled us to leave the DAY AFTER WE GOT BACK !!! They refused to accept blame ( I think, since the guy barely spoke English) and I ended up paying an extra $800 to have our nonrefundable tickets changed, and then they spread us and our child out over the plane sitting no where near each other. What a ripoff !

Anonymous said...

I created a group on facebook: travelocity sucks:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Travelocity-Sucks/129372570418956?ref=search

Anonymous said...

When you finally get a hold of a customer service agent you can't understand them because you are calling India! I had a reservation for Thurs, Fri, Sat and needed to xcl Thurs but leave Fri & Sat. I'm told they have to completely xcl my reservation so now my rate would $40 more than original rate for the remaining nights. I won't use Travelocity again.

Anonymous said...

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE TRAVELOCITY....WORKS GREAT FOR ME GET DISCOUNTS AND NEVER HAD A PROBLEM I LOVE COMING ON THIS SITES AND READING IDIOTS WHO DONT KNOW HOW TO DO ANYTHING BLAME EVERYONE ELSE FOR THEIR PROBLEMS WELL SUCKS FOR YOUS BUT TRAVELOCITY IS NOT HURTING FROM YOUR COMMMENTS THEY JUST HIT NUMBER 1 IN ONLINE TRAVEL SITES! LOVE TRAVELOCITY...I NEVER ROME ALONE

Anonymous said...

Travelocity also lies about their lower price guarantee. See http://www.twitter.com/Travelocity_lie
@Travelocity_lie
or email Travelocity.lies@gmail.com

Boycott them until their guarantee isn't a scam....

Anonymous said...

Worst service ever. Took 3 cell phones calling for 1 hour before we got to customer service. Lost our reservations, lost our payment.Had to rebook on a terrible schedule.
Talking to someone half way around the world didn't make it any easier.
Good riddance Travelocity.

Sarah Marshal said...

Travelcity has major financial problems according to some publications. I heard that many complaints from clients have been filed in, and now they are losing tons of money on lawsuits. Not a good thing for them.

Donna said...

the dwarf is flipping me off

Vanessa said...

i'd rather not use web basted travel companies, it's easier actually to go to their location ask and find out..

Anonymous said...

i recommend never using travelocity, jet blue sells travel packages. the difference is you will actually get someone that speaks english with jet blue. travelocity is based out of another country so everyone speaks with a strong indian accent. i booked a plane ticket and hotel and car to florida with travelocity and got the trip insurance just in case. where i am in the military i called them and asked if i get the trip insurance would i be able to change my trip at no cost to me if my orders get changed. which ended up happening i had to change my whole package to a later date and travelocity effed everything up. they charged me 250.00 to change my package because the trip insurance only covers injury or death. when i later called to confirm i was on the phone for well over 3 hours because jet blue said they did not have a ticket for me. i then had to call travelocity and they tried to argue and say that we where all set with our flight and everything. which we where not! after being hung up on 2 times from travelocity they finally called jet blue and said they understand the problem we are all set but they had to change my flight to a later time on my flight out. so i lost a day of leave and fun in the sun in florida, all well as long as i get there. now today the day before we leave i called travelocity to see if there was any cancellations for an earlier flight and they could not find any of my flight or hotel info. only my car rental. why am i going to need a car rental when i cant even get there? i then called jet blue and they confirmed my flight i then called the hotel and they confirmed my room. why travelocity says i only have a car when i booked through them is beyond me. screw travelocity and there terrible music when they put you on hold. use an american company if you know what's good for you, and god bless america!!!

Anonymous said...

Got bumped from my morning flight booked through Travelocity. Then tried to call Travelocity to change it (8x!) and still no resolution. Instead got a lecture from the Travelocity agent to call back later.

Thanks for nothing you horrible horrible company.

TimAcree said...

I'm a 22 year old male, and Travelocity is so frustrating that I just cried for the first time since hitting puberty. I've never felt so helpless in my entire life. Avoid Travelocity like the plague.

DisgruntledMan said...

Travelocity has proven the bane of our existence these past couple days. My friend and I booked flights to Spain through Travelocity and, upon arriving to the airport, found that our travel confirmation numbers didn't work at the check in desk. The airline people didn't know what the problem was, so we called the brilliant crack squad at Travelocity to see what the dealio was. After some struggles with automated voice reply b.s., I finally got through to some douche behind a desk out in India who used English as a third language. Several repeated stories and inadequate responses later, he casually informed me, "Unfortunately, we do apologize but it appears your airline has gone bankrupt." That's right, after months of planning and weeks of mounting anticipation, our trip appeared to be derailed because our freakin airline didn't even exist. Thanks for the heads up there, Travelocity! We never received any notification, whether by email or phone, in the days leading up to the trip about any problems with our flight. In fact, I had received a final confirmation email from them just a few hours prior, confirming our flight through SpanAir, which we now know to be utterly kaput. And instead of just finding us a new flight, they assured me all I had to do was call my bank for a potential refund on our 600 dollar tickets, and then travelocity could find us a new flight, which WE WOULD HAVE TO PAY FOR. In other words, get our 600 bucks back, but then fork over$3,000 for a new international flight. Right. We eventually had the supervisor of United on our team, yelling at the moron supervisor over at Travelocity on the phone, trying to assure them that they should be able to take care of us, and that it really shouldn't be that hard. But at the end of the day, after several hours on the phone and on hold, they said the inventory kept getting voided and that they would have to take it up with "upper management," which of course could not be bothered on a Sunday, due to some very important tee times at the local country club. So they said they'd rake through our situation with the higher-ups on Monday and call us back then. It's Monday afternoon now, I'm back at home, and I'm currently on hold with some guy at Travelocity Team India. Oh joy.

Anonymous said...

I have a serious warning for anyone looking to use discount travel websites. Especially Travelocity. I'll start with a little back ground. While planning a trip to visit our son in San Diego for graduation we looked at a few travel sites. Priceline, Orbitz, Expedia, and of course Travelocity.

I like the set up on Travelocity so that is who we decided to go with. The prices were good. Tickets, for our dates, were around $338. Awesome I thought! All 4 of us could get to San Diego for $1352. Great deal right?! You could get that price if you wanted to fly out at 6:00 AM. Getting to the airport by 4:00 AM and leaving home by 2:30 AM to drive there. Later flights the prices start going up. OK, no problem. We picked a good time (8:30 AM) and it was $360. Still good.

Next page... Return flight. Again starting early morning but the prices kept going up. We needed to head out after graduation so we had to pick a much later flight 8:00 PM and arrive back in Milwaukee by 8:00 AM (6 hours of layovers at 2 Airports) How much you may ask? $440 per person. By time we got done with fees and taxes it came to almost $2000($1983). That was not cool. Discount site??? Hmmm. Well we went ahead because would couldn't find a better deal right by Thanksgiving.

Then our worst nightmare came true, graduation was moved from Friday to Wednesday. We would arrive at the airport 2 hours after Ben's graduation. As soon as I found out I called Travelocity. That is when the TRUE nightmare began. It seems that even though I requested 'refundable' tickets. They gave me NON-fundable tickets. It played out that it was their agents word against mine and ultimately they decided to charge us a fee to make changes.

I make special note that Travelocity is a US company but their customer service is in India. If I knew Hindi I think I would have been OK. Sadly I speak English and they kinda did...

Keep in mind these are electronic tickets. It takes no effort to make the changes... How much of a fee you ask? Well, $150 for each ticket along with $40 per ticket for Travelocity's fee. Total fees to change the dates? $760. Yup! After much debate I was able to get them to drop the $40 fee. That left us with a $600 change fee.

After saving up for a couple weeks we called to make the changes. I contacted "India" and asked them to transfer me to the US. Talked to a US agent and she made the flight changes and proceeded to charge us $605. Why an extra $5? NO idea.

Next day I was out with friends and went to pay for lunch. Card declined! OK... went home to find out that Travelocity charged us an additional $151.20 four times. Why? A computer glitch. After talking to multiple agents they said the 'illegal' charges would be reversed within 24 hours... 24 hours later I was on the phone being told it would be 48 hours... 60 hours later I was back on he phone. This time telling them that if my money wasn't back in my account by 9:00 AM Monday I would file fraudulent transaction charges at my bank...

By Saturday they finally pushed it through and in the process cancelled the original $605 too. In the end it worked out fine but getting there was not fun.

The moral to this very long tale is to know what you are getting into. After you give them permission to charge you, all hell can break lose. I am sure people that don't need to change anything are fine. If you do however... If you need to talk to customer service... I wish you the best of luck!

Anonymous said...

Travelocity kept my son & I from our yearly vacation! Wanted another $1000 at checkin to change my sons ticket!!! It was a catastrophe!!! Gowww.SkyScanner.net or Expedia. Outsourced call center to INDIA should be first HUGE red flag!!! Travelocity SUX!!!

Anonymous said...

Travelocity is displaying a new trick. You make your reservation, a window pops up telling you it was not accepted and prompts you to call 01800 When you do they inform you that your card was declined and, by the time they pick up the phone, the price of your flight has gone up a hundred bucks. For some misterious readon, the second time your card goes through without any problems. Yeah, sure. I believe they are deceiving their clients. Someone with the computer skills should be able to check this out.

Unknown said...
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Anonymous said...

WARNING: BOOKING WITH TRAVELOCITY
CAN MAKE YOU A FELONY SUSPECT!

Yes, it happened to me. Travelocity booked and confirmed my itinerary, but due to a software defect it was billed to some random other credit card. When I noticed it, I tried to call customer service and say "you got the wrong credit card here. Give them their money back and here, take my credit card number and charge it for this itinerary." This would have been a reasonable and easy solution. But noooooo!

They insisted that there was no defect and that there would not be any refund ever to anyone! Ever! They accused me of entering the other credit card (how in the world would I know their number, name, address, expiration, security code? Only Travelocity has all that info. I got them to cancel the itinerary, but the poor sucker out there is out hundreds of dollars, and this unauthorized use of credit card is associated with my itinerary! I will be No. 1 suspect in a felony! Today I went to see my lawyer to head off what might happen. Travelocity has defective software and is negligent, reckless, unreasonable, and abusive! Truly bizarre!