Horrible experience that cost me time and money
Complaint
Marc
Country: United States
To whom it may concern.
I’m sending this to you in hopes of somebody from Travelocity acting as if they care. I manage a large group of people myself and I’m always grateful when someone can share their experiences in order for my team to get better. I hope this is something that can help your team as well. I’m also going to forward this to the president and all the board members if I don’t get a response in a reasonable time. Additionally, I will post on FB to several thousands of friends to see the level of service that was given by Travelocity. Below is what I initially sent to customer service.
I’m very disappointed that Travelocity doesn’t seem to care about their customers. I was very excited about booking a weekend trip to New York to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. I shopped around on several different sites and decided to book with Travelocity because they had a feature that allowed us to cancel or change the reservation up to 48 hours before the trip. I found this to be a huge selling point because we have a young daughter who is our only child and we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to get someone to watch her. Plus she is very co-dependent and has separation anxiety being the only child.
The same day after booking I realized that the hotel we booked wasn’t in Time Square where we intended on staying. No problem the hotel we were wanting to switch it too was about the same price and I added the insurance that had the no fee for canceling or changing the reservation feature. I tried to make the change online, but it kept sending me back to the same screen and would not let me change it. I decided to contact Travelocity directly and that’s where the fun began.
First off, the representative I was connected to was very difficult to understand. I would keep having to repeat things over and over again and even had to spell things out to her. I told her what I was trying to do and she said I could easily do that online. I really wanted her to do this for me because I had already spent time trying to accomplish this and was unsuccessful, but she was almost persistent on me doing it online and seemed put out that she was having to help me in the first place. Okay, I decided to just handle it online and followed the directions she gave me. After about an hour of trying to accomplish this online and getting the same message I previously got 2 hours ago when I initially tried to change this, I contacted customer service again.
This time I got someone I could understand better even though it was still challenging to communicate. I told her what I was trying to do and she quickly said I had to call in and do this and couldn’t do it online. Huh? What about the other rep who told me I could easily do this online? As she was going through the process of making the change she told me that the price has gone up and now I would have to pay $200+ more. I told her 2 ½ ago when I tried to do this the price was about the same and even 10 minutes ago when I was online trying to accomplish this the price was still the same. Obviously I was very frustrated because if the initial rep wouldn’t have given me bad information or would have just done this while I was on the phone I wouldn’t be in the situation. After trying to explain this to her multiple time and her not truly understanding what seemed to be the problem, I asked to speak to the supervisor. This process took about 25 minutes to finally get to speak to someone.
The supervisor (Lewis) came on and pretty much read from the same script everyone else I talked to read from. No one seemed to understand what the problem was and they certainly weren’t going to fix it. The supervisor asked me what I wanted and I told him I wanted exactly what I paid for. I wanted them to honor the price that was on their website and make sure I had the feature to change or cancel within 48 hours of the trip. He said they couldn’t do that because inventory changes and they don’t control the price. Also, because I was just changing the hotel portion on the trip I wasn’t getting the package discount like I had gotten earlier. He was trying to give me a minimal credit that didn’t even come close to paying for the difference and he said he couldn’t add the no change or cancellation feature because it would be a lot more expensive. After about 2 hours on the phone I decided to say mercy and told them I would be contacting corporate tomorrow to get this straightened out.
I ended messaging with someone I thought was in the escalation department. They kept sending me messages saying they had someone in their “priority” department working on it and would get back to me within 24 hours. After 24 hours had come and gone I messaged them again and once again they said the same thing that someone in their “priority” department is researching it and would get back to me shortly. I honestly got this same message 4 consecutive days. The crazy thing is each time they would contact me they acted as if they had no clue why I was even messaging them. Yesterday I told them that enough was enough and if they didn’t have someone from their “PRIORITY” department get back with me within 24 hours that I was going to post my experience on social media in hopes that others don’t have to experience the same level of service or lack thereof that I had to deal go through. I’m in the service business I always want to be fair and give people the opportunity to make it right when they make a mistake. I feel like I was more than patient with them and gave them apple time (one week now) to at least reach out to me and discuss the matter. Nope, they have chosen not to do this to this point.
After doing research I noticed a lot of others get this type of service from Travelocity. I also realized that Expedia and Orbitz are all owned by the same company and don’t really care. They think that because they brand themselves differently and if someone doesn’t go to this site they will end up going to one of their other sites. This is what happens when we allow a monopoly of an industry.
Lost in all the shuffle is me trying to do something special for our 15th wedding anniversary and having all the uncertainty and this type of experience really puts a damper on this. I’m sad that Travelocity just doesn’t seem to care and it will take more people standing up and voicing their concerns before anything is done about it. Please let me know if you have any suggestions on who to contact or next steps to get this resolved.
Sincerely,
Marc
I’m sending this to you in hopes of somebody from Travelocity acting as if they care. I manage a large group of people myself and I’m always grateful when someone can share their experiences in order for my team to get better. I hope this is something that can help your team as well. I’m also going to forward this to the president and all the board members if I don’t get a response in a reasonable time. Additionally, I will post on FB to several thousands of friends to see the level of service that was given by Travelocity. Below is what I initially sent to customer service.
I’m very disappointed that Travelocity doesn’t seem to care about their customers. I was very excited about booking a weekend trip to New York to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. I shopped around on several different sites and decided to book with Travelocity because they had a feature that allowed us to cancel or change the reservation up to 48 hours before the trip. I found this to be a huge selling point because we have a young daughter who is our only child and we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to get someone to watch her. Plus she is very co-dependent and has separation anxiety being the only child.
The same day after booking I realized that the hotel we booked wasn’t in Time Square where we intended on staying. No problem the hotel we were wanting to switch it too was about the same price and I added the insurance that had the no fee for canceling or changing the reservation feature. I tried to make the change online, but it kept sending me back to the same screen and would not let me change it. I decided to contact Travelocity directly and that’s where the fun began.
First off, the representative I was connected to was very difficult to understand. I would keep having to repeat things over and over again and even had to spell things out to her. I told her what I was trying to do and she said I could easily do that online. I really wanted her to do this for me because I had already spent time trying to accomplish this and was unsuccessful, but she was almost persistent on me doing it online and seemed put out that she was having to help me in the first place. Okay, I decided to just handle it online and followed the directions she gave me. After about an hour of trying to accomplish this online and getting the same message I previously got 2 hours ago when I initially tried to change this, I contacted customer service again.
This time I got someone I could understand better even though it was still challenging to communicate. I told her what I was trying to do and she quickly said I had to call in and do this and couldn’t do it online. Huh? What about the other rep who told me I could easily do this online? As she was going through the process of making the change she told me that the price has gone up and now I would have to pay $200+ more. I told her 2 ½ ago when I tried to do this the price was about the same and even 10 minutes ago when I was online trying to accomplish this the price was still the same. Obviously I was very frustrated because if the initial rep wouldn’t have given me bad information or would have just done this while I was on the phone I wouldn’t be in the situation. After trying to explain this to her multiple time and her not truly understanding what seemed to be the problem, I asked to speak to the supervisor. This process took about 25 minutes to finally get to speak to someone.
The supervisor (Lewis) came on and pretty much read from the same script everyone else I talked to read from. No one seemed to understand what the problem was and they certainly weren’t going to fix it. The supervisor asked me what I wanted and I told him I wanted exactly what I paid for. I wanted them to honor the price that was on their website and make sure I had the feature to change or cancel within 48 hours of the trip. He said they couldn’t do that because inventory changes and they don’t control the price. Also, because I was just changing the hotel portion on the trip I wasn’t getting the package discount like I had gotten earlier. He was trying to give me a minimal credit that didn’t even come close to paying for the difference and he said he couldn’t add the no change or cancellation feature because it would be a lot more expensive. After about 2 hours on the phone I decided to say mercy and told them I would be contacting corporate tomorrow to get this straightened out.
I ended messaging with someone I thought was in the escalation department. They kept sending me messages saying they had someone in their “priority” department working on it and would get back to me within 24 hours. After 24 hours had come and gone I messaged them again and once again they said the same thing that someone in their “priority” department is researching it and would get back to me shortly. I honestly got this same message 4 consecutive days. The crazy thing is each time they would contact me they acted as if they had no clue why I was even messaging them. Yesterday I told them that enough was enough and if they didn’t have someone from their “PRIORITY” department get back with me within 24 hours that I was going to post my experience on social media in hopes that others don’t have to experience the same level of service or lack thereof that I had to deal go through. I’m in the service business I always want to be fair and give people the opportunity to make it right when they make a mistake. I feel like I was more than patient with them and gave them apple time (one week now) to at least reach out to me and discuss the matter. Nope, they have chosen not to do this to this point.
After doing research I noticed a lot of others get this type of service from Travelocity. I also realized that Expedia and Orbitz are all owned by the same company and don’t really care. They think that because they brand themselves differently and if someone doesn’t go to this site they will end up going to one of their other sites. This is what happens when we allow a monopoly of an industry.
Lost in all the shuffle is me trying to do something special for our 15th wedding anniversary and having all the uncertainty and this type of experience really puts a damper on this. I’m sad that Travelocity just doesn’t seem to care and it will take more people standing up and voicing their concerns before anything is done about it. Please let me know if you have any suggestions on who to contact or next steps to get this resolved.
Sincerely,
Marc
Post a new comment