Travelocity.com / travelocity.co.uk Beware!
So I travel a lot and mostly use expedia.com and expedia.co.uk, both of which I am a VIP member. The VIP membership gives you priority booking That’s all, is free and has nothing glamorous about it. Also a member on expediacorporate.com. Again nothing special there either, just the typical internet fares for flights and hotels and you get what you pay for or make a booking for. However since I was feeling adventurous I decided to search for "the cheapest airline fares online" and well by sheer luck or maybe it was my turn to get shafted, ended up on travelocity.com website. Since the trip was between England, USA and involved travelling between the States, I decided to do a search on both. Compared all the rates offered on Travelocity with expedia, cheaptickets, hotel, orbitz, hotwire and priceline.com and surprisingly found out that both travelocity.com and travelocity.co.uk were cheaper for traveling within USA and to and from England respectively. So after being very pleased with my discovery I ended up making a total of four bookings online. One with the UK site to take me to and from USA and another three with the US site. Or a total of ten flight segments. In total I saved close to $150.00 Obviously I was well pleased with myself. BUT, turned out that my flight destinations' included one stop happened to be in Germany. And required me to have a Visa. Now, considering that I was supposed to be flying west from London and going to the Chicago. It hardly occurred to me that the one stop which they reveal after the booking could actually be in the east of England. I thought it was probably on the east coast. So as soon as my London flight was confirmed and I received the details. I was searching fo a phone number to call them. Turned out that the UK office was closed at the time and that I had to call the following morning. I decided to email them anyway and let them know that this was unacceptable as I was only traveling into London two days before and would not have any time atoll to go to an embassy for Germany and obtain a visa before traveling therefore I need that flight cancelled unless they can provide me with an alternative. The following day I called them and got through to an flights agent who assured me that there was not a problem she could go ahead and cancel my flight for me at the cost of only 70 British Pounds. I asked her to find me an alternative, she did but the only problem was I would have to pay 70 Pounds to cancel the first booking or pay a convenient 25 Pounds to change the booking to the new one which was only 83 pounds more expensive. So I would only be paying an additional 108 British Pounds. I demanded to speak to a supervisor. The supervisor was a lady who came on the phone and asked me that why had I not resolved this matter with her colleague? Informed me that she had been listening and monitoring her colleague as she was spending too much time on the phone with me. !!! I tried to explain to her that she was trying to find me an alternative solution because of the fact that flight details were not revealed to me before booking the flight. Made her understand that I had actually sent an email within Minutes of finding out that the flight booked was something I would not be able to travel on! The bottom line was she told me "You will have to pay 100 Pounds to cancel it, and that’s the best I can do, I can cancel this ticket for you right now minus the "100 Pounds cancellation fee". I tried my best to contain my anger and told her that I was just told a few minutes ago that the cancellation fee was 70 Pounds. She snapped back at me with "Sir, that was almost an hour ago when you first called and my colleague was making a special concession for you as she could sympathize with your situation but unfortunately you did not take her up on that offer and the company policy is that we charge "100 Pounds for a cancellation of this type because our request for ticket issue has already been forwarded to the airline and a ticket has already been issued". I told her to not cancel the booking but hold it, whilst talking to her on the phone I was already on the second line to get the airline on the phone. Got straight through and gave them my details and booking details. The gentleman on the phone told me that Yes The booking had been made but since it was within the 24 hour cancellation period. The booking agent will get a full refund as no tickets had been issued yet. I conveyed the information received back to the travelocity supervisor and she flat out refused to accept it saying that she knew what she was talking about and the airline agent didn’t. The guy at the airline wasn’t too happy and gave me booking numbers and some other agent markers or whatever they're called which I conveyed back to the travelocity supervisor. She then sheepishly told me that She didn’t have that information on her system and according to her "booking Office" the request had been made and ticket issued and she had other clients to take care of and this is really taking too much of her time and unless I agree to let them charge me 100 Pounds I would loose all the money and soon according to company policy I would not be entitled to any refund at all. I received the refund, along with her name and title and all other information I needed to make an official claim. Went back online to make my bookings for the London - Chicago flight. Lost another $80 but got a flight that made a stop-over in Boston. Lost half a day in Chicago as well, that I would've had otherwise with the initial booking. Contacted travelocity.com with all details and reference numbers both from the airline and the travelocity booking office. They refused to acknowledge any legitimate fault of theirs. Obtained the cancellation times of the particular booking from the airline and the booking time and it turned out that my booking was infact never completed by travelocity but was a tentative booking and was not to be confirmed until after the initial 24 hours by the airline. Apparently a lot of booking agencies did that, they would hold the seat, receive the payments and then the seats would be automatically confirmed after 24 hours unless cancelled. According to travelocity.com they were had to pay penalty charges to the airline for canceling my booking, I was told this over the phone. I sent an email requesting them to tell me the same in writing. They refused to reply and instead informed me that my dispute claim was closed as I had already collected my refund. I've tried to give as fair and accurate account of my dealings with travelocity.com and travelocity.co.uk. I'm sorry if it was a bit long to read but I really hope that people will read this and stay away from their website. It has been a serious disappointment and a major cause of numerous headaches. The only reason why I now have gone back to expedia is because of their reliability and simply because I have yet to find an online travel agent that provides a better service for a world traveler who makes bookings from foreign places and hardly ever in the originating city of travel at the time of the booking.
posted by The One Ocean @ 3/20/2005 04:12:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home