Orbitz Shmorbitz

Ever booked a flight through Expedia or Travelocity? It’s pretty easy these days to plan a trip. You can pick your dates, flight accomodations, hotel, rental car….everything. Well there’s another website out there kind of like Expedia and Travelocity: Orbitz? On their website, we can see that they pride themselves on being “One Step Ahead”…..except they overlook the fact that their website is difficult to navigate, they book impossible itineraries, and they have poor customer service. See this story below (taken from Maddox’s website):

I was booking a ticket a while ago and decided to try Orbitz instead of Travelocity or Expedia for a change. I was connecting in San Francisco for an international flight, and found two tickets that were almost identical, except one cost about $30 less and had a stop in San Jose. I figured that the extra stop wouldn’t make a huge difference, so I might as well save some money. WRONG. After I booked the ticket, I noticed something strange: there were no travel details on how I would get from San Jose to San Francisco. I called Orbitz and they told me that I would have to provide my own transportation from San Jose to San Francisco. What?

So I did some research and found the following:

  9:35 AM - Flight arrives in San Jose, California

  9:50 AM - It takes up to 15 minutes to exit the plan and collect luggage.

  9:55 AM - Up to 5 minutes to hail a cab or shuttle.

10:45 AM - Up to 50 minutes to travel to San Grancisco with heacy morning traffic.

My flight departed San Francisco at 12:45 PM (corrected), so I should have had plenty of time, except for one major detail: YOU NEED TO CHECK IN AT LEAST 2 HOURS EARLY FOR INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS. This isn’t even taking account the time it would take to get through long lines and security. Orbitz made a mistake: they sold me an impossible itinerary. Having a delayed flight was not an option because I was on a tight schedule. There was no way I was going to miss this plane.

So I called Orbitz back, they told me to call Delta and United. I did, and I spoke to managers at both Delta and United who confirmed that the itinerary was impossible to fulfill, and both of them referred me back to Orbitz. Before I called to tear Orbitz a new one, I checked the fine print of my itinerary to make sure it didn’t mention anything about having to break the laws of physics for all or part of my trip. The email notification made no mention of this either. My conversation with Orbitz went something like this:

    

20 minutes later:

   

  

   

Orbitz flat-out refused to help me. So I ended up having to buy a one-way ticket to San Francisco for $144 just so I could make my flight on time. After numerous complaints to customer service, I finally got a response about a month later: Dear valued customer, blah blah blah, we don’t really [care] about your plight, so here’s a slap in the face in the form of a coupon to save $50 off your next flight with Orbitz.

No. Not good enough. I shouldn’t have to pay 1 cent extra for their mistake. I wrote back and told them that I wanted the full $144 refunded and they never responded.

I will never do business with Orbitz again, and neither should you. Here are just a few of the thousands of emails I’ve received in the last couple of days [with similar stories]:

I won’t use orbitz any more either. I booked a flight for my husband and I to fly from Cincinnati to Boston for a friends wedding. A few days before the flight I got check and make sure no flights have been changed and corirm plans and that is when I noticed they booked both tickets under my name! I was [livid]!! Orbitz refused to do anything and basically said too bad. I had to use my frequent flyer miles to get my husband another ticket. I then proceeded to find the CEOs of Orbitz telephone number using the wonder of the internet. I called every day and left a message and had my friends do the same for me. Eventually my money was refunded. I guess someone getting paid big sacks of money with dollar signs on it decided that giving my my $150 back was better than dealing with my [whining] every day into his voice mail.

Melissa

We too got ripped off. After sending the information on when we’d like the flight at Orbitz, we got a new screen showing us what our tickets looked like. And what do you know? IT HAD THE WRONG DATES IN A DIFFERENT MONTH. No question on us putting the dates in correctly–there was [sic] two of us filling it out. So we called. And they told us we have a faulty browser or something is wrong with our internet. Right. Definitely our Internet Explorer is faulty, and we are definitely the only people who use it. Or is it our internet service provider who is to blame? Yup, you guessed it: no refund.

-TB

I booked well in advance tickets from Rochester, NY to San Diego, CA.  400 whatever dollars who gives a fuck.  A few days before the flight I check the Orbitz site to get my eticket code and come to find out… MY TICKET HAS BEEN CANCELED. Why?  The connection time was under 40 minutes. Pretty stupid of me right?  WRONG. I typed in Rochester, NY I typed in San Diego, and then the days… and then Orbitz GAVE ME those flights with the under 40 minute connection time.  THEY TOLD ME to make those flights and didn’t let me know that I needed a longer connection time.  Not when I purchased the tickets, and not even by email to let me know there was a problem. So I had to purchase the tickets all over again, but since it was two days before the flight it cost three times as much. A call to customer support gave me the same [crap] you went through.  The stupid broad actually had the nerve to tell me, “You need to be your own travel agent.” I will never book with Orbitz again and applaud your efforts to bring down that sham of a company.

Maddox received thousands of emails from people like those above saying that they had emailed Orbitz’s customer service and sworn to never book flights through them.

This is the new form letter Orbitz is replying with to people who send them emails regarding this page:

Thank you for your recent e-mail regarding the comments about Orbitz.com which you saw posted on Maddox’s website, http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net. We understand your concerns and want to address them in this email.

The problem Maddox describes took place approximately three (3) years ago in May of 2002. As a travel agency, Orbitz displays flight schedules and itineraries obtained directly from the airlines. Each itinerary that we sell meets airline requirements for appropriate “minimum connection times”, including the flights purchased by Maddox.

In his message, Maddox takes great pains to detail his itinerary, but there are significant inaccuracies in the information he provides. He made the point that he was scheduled to arrive in San Jose at 9:39 am and depart from San Francisco at 12:00 noon. His flight was actually scheduled to depart at 12:45 pm so he had a total of 3 hours and 6 minutes to connect to the other airport, as opposed to the 2 hours and 21 minutes he claimed. Regardless of the fact that Maddox’s flight connection was valid, Orbitz offered him a $50 travel voucher as a gesture of goodwill when we were notified of his concerns.

We truly regret Maddox’s disappointing experience from three years ago and any concerns it has raised with our valued customers today. Orbitz elected to change its policy last year to no longer display inter-airport connections, so Maddox’s experience is unlikely to happen to travelers who book with Orbitz today. We’ve made many other upgrades to our website over the past few years and have been recognized by third party industry organizations for our consumer friendly web site and Customer Care program that offer travelers unique value.

We welcome our customers to share feedback on disappointing and positive experiences with our company as we continue our commitment to providing a superior web site and travel experience. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Orbitz.com

Hmmm, breach of customer confidenciality???

Well that about does it. Can you believe these guys?

DON’T USE ORBITZ.