itsme

Is there a Travelocity Sucks thread somewhere here on FT? If not, maybe this will be the start of one. "Caveat emptor" isn't strong enough where Travelocity isn't concerned, it should be B-E-W-A-R-E. Here's the experience I just had with them this past week.

Procrastinated about buying a ticket to ORD, and when finally went to buy one 7 days out, the fares on UA had jumped from $167 to $600?! Looked at Travelocity, though, and saw that I could ticket through them at $216. Hit "select," then gave them my AmEx details, and within the hour had an email confirmation from Travocity of my UA flights, that email confirmation noting, "We have charged your American Express account xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-1234 $216." Thought nothing more of the matter until late Saturday night, when I called UA to see about my seat assignment for my flight in the morning at 7:54AM. To my great surprise and alarm, UA told me that Travelocity had cancelled me out days before and I didn't have a ticket?!

I was mega-distressed that I was supposed to be leaving the house in another 8 hours or so, headed for a professional meeting, and here I was without a ticket, a number of flights sold out, and the prospect of paying 3x what I thought it was to cost me.

Called Travelocity and after 1/2 hour on the phone with "Martin" in their foreign call center (India) trying to understand him and hold for stretches at a time, I learned that Travelocity had never purchased my ticket, that they hadn't be able to do it at the price they contracted with me for, so simply canceled the "reservation" that had been made. And though they had given me my flight details, including the UA record locater, and told me my card had been charged $216, it wasn't so, or at least not exactly so. According to AmEx, Travelocity had been given a total of $216 in approvals, $7 for themselves and $199 for UA, but never went further, so never in fact charged.

It turns out that two days after I purchased online through them, Travelocity tried to contact me. Though they had my email address and had used it to confirm the booking, they sent no "correction" by email. Instead, they left a message on my cell phone directing me to call Travelocity. (Glad I didn't get that call, nor pick up the voicemail until when I did, which is after I learned of this train wreck. Had I call them, I expect I would have been simply SOL, with them insisting that they didn't have to go through with the sale as originally contracted.) Anyway, after a good deal of browbeating them with threats of what I would do if they didn't make good on our deal, they went ahead and purchased from United the original flights I was to be on. (They wanted to send me back home on US with a change of planes in LGA adding 2hours over what it was to be on UA, but I would not let them. So what if there ticketing department was telling this supervisor that that was the best they would do for me, I was not compromising with them.)

So, in the end, I got my flights for the amount I was supposed to pay, but only after >1 hour on the phone arguing it with them. And if I hadn't checked from home that night before heading to the airport in the AM, I would have been screwed royally.

This experience with Travelocity was more than enough for me. I don't know why anyone else would do business with a company like this one, when there is so little recourse when things screw up. Booking directly with UA, I have much, much more security and am able to reach real people, not the "Martin" and "Mark" who I had to beat up to get them to do the right thing. BEWARE, TRAVELOCITY SUCKS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

OutOfOffice

When Travelocity works, it works fine. But agreed when things go wrong, Travelocity can be pretty awful.

Only thing I would mention though is the common suggestion and something I routinely do when booking through third party travel vendors is to call the Airline directly the day after booking to verify they have confirmed the reservation. Even better, if you have the confirmation number, just check the reservation on the airline website. Same applies to Hotel & Car reservations.

Hope a letter or escalation with Travelocity brings you results!

wharvey

I am always reluctant to use the 3rd party sites for airfares... much prefer the airline sites... usually do not find 3rd party sites cheaper anyway.

I have seen many horror stories in this forum about Travelocity and Expedia to make me run in the opposite direction.

You seem to have gotten more than many others... I do hope you complain... that is unacceptable.

In their defense though, they did try to reach you... would have been an interesting conversation in the moment...

Jaimito Cartero

I have Travelocity custom luggage tags that say, "The Gnome sucks".

Bobster

The lesson to be learned here is not that Travelocity sucks, it's that you should never answer your phone.

I mean, you got them to honor a mistake fare. What's so wrong with that?

itsme

I didn't know it was a "mistake" fare. I thought Travelocity was somehow able to still sell the fare that was out there earlier that day, though united.com seemed to indicate it was gone. Not as though I was look at a $100 SFO-SYD fare on Travelocity, something that would be an unmistakeable mistake. And I never doubted for a minute that I had in fact purchased it, since I received prompt written (email) advice from Travelocity that it had been purchased using my AmEx card, and all appeared in order with the UA record locater there. They send no further follow-up email of any sort, and I was shocked to learn only hours before my scheduled departure that there was no booking for me. I'm glad that "Mark" and I were able to resolve it, but it never should have happened, I do think it reflects very unfavorably on their integrity as a company, and I would have gone after them hammer and tongs if they had not gotten me on my flights for the original price.

itsme

I didn't know it was a "mistake" fare. I thought Travelocity was somehow able to still sell the fare that was out there earlier that day, though united.com seemed to indicate it was gone. Not as though I was look at a $100 SFO-SYD fare on Travelocity, something that would be an unmistakeable mistake. And I never doubted for a minute that I had in fact purchased it, since I received prompt written (email) advice from Travelocity that it had been purchased using my AmEx card, and all appeared in order with the UA record locater there. They send no further follow-up email of any sort, and I was shocked to learn only hours before my scheduled departure that there was no booking for me. I'm glad that "Mark" and I were able to resolve it, but it never should have happened, I do think it reflects very unfavorably on their integrity as a company, and I would have gone after them hammer and tongs if they had not gotten me on my flights for the original price.

And I still think Travelocity SUCKS. But if others think otherwise, that is surely their perogative.

ewick12

This same thing happened to me, except I received the call a day or so later saying that they didn't book the flights. By that time tickets had increased drastically so we ended up not making the trip. I have never used Travelocity since. I'm pretty sure that this is their standard operating procedure.

hsxagent

You didn't happen to be at ORD say around 7:15 am, on 3/28/07 in terminal F, waiting in line for McDonalds? While waiting in you didn't happen to harass anyone close to you as to how bad Travelocity sucks! How you would never use them again, and they are the suckest bunch of sucks that ever sucked!

Because if you were, thanks for the laughs, it helped make the 30 minute wait for a sausage biscuit and OJ bearable!

itsme

No, it wasn't me. But I suppose it says I am not the only person convinced that Travelocity SUCKS! ewick12's report, though, is more on point, since it seems he experienced pretty much the same thing as I did, except he didn't get any satisfaction.

Bobster

My error. I misread the OP. There was no reason to suspect a mistake fair.

BEAV

I too would much prefer to book airline tickets direct from the airline vs a third party site. But lately, I've had much better luck with Expedia than any airline site.

Case 1 - Booked a one way YHZ-LGA/JFK-SFO on Air Canada/United. Wanted plenty of time to make the transfer between LGA & JFK. In order to get a published YHZ-SFO fare, UAL would not ticket a 5-hr connection, but Expedia would. The only itinerary I could get UAL to ticket involved a 3-hr connection, which was too tight for my preference.

Case 2 - Using the multiple-cities option, Expedia was able to price out and ticket a SFO-ATL-SJU, LGW-ATL-SFO on DL to coincide with our Transatlantic cruise. Although I was able to bring up the same flights on Delta's site, it would not go to the next step to price and ticket the itinerary without an error code. Expedia wins again.

Case 3 - Needed to book MOD-DRO and return for the mother-in-law. UAL via SFO/DEN was $680 round trip, however Expedia offered MOD-SFO-SLC (UA) and SLC-DRO (DL) and return for $501. Of course UA.bomb wouldn't price out such an itinerary, so once again back to Expedia. Later on had to make a change to this ticket and feared the worst since it would involve a phone call to Expedia. But I was fortunate to not only reach someone with no language barrier issues, but who executed the changes quickly...in about five minutes.

In each of the above scenarios I checked things out over at Travelocity, but from my experience Expedia is far superior when it comes to air fare.

Edit to add I really like Expedia's ability to search/select each direction of a round trip separately as opposed to having to select a round trip "package" all in one.

itsme

I take your counterpoint on behalf of Expedia (not Travelocity!) and their potential advantages when booking some exceptional itineraries. But what does one do when something goes wrong, is there some recourse? While there are undoubtedly many stories about unsatisfactory experiences with airline website bookings, I do know to whom to complain when my beef is with the airline, and I have a pretty good sense of how to go about it. But what does one do when they have been screwed by an "intermediary" party, like Travelocity? Is there anyway to gain traction, indeed even to get their attention in the first place?

It was a long, unpleasant "discourse" before the Travelocity supervisor said they would get me ticketed for the flight I was originally scheduled on, leaving 8 hours later. If I had not been able to get them to do the right thing with a great deal of browbeating, what would/should I have done next? How would others have handled it? Does one have any leverage in circumstances like mine when facing off against a Travelocity? (Note, I couldn't look to AmEx for the help I would ordinarily expect from them, because the charges were never made after Travelocity got approval for them.)

Bowgie

Well, I didn't really think so until I read the posts here from two different people about Travelocity not honoring purchased tickets.

In previous fare mistakes, some FT's have had success purchasing tickets from Zuji, a Singapore online travel agency, as the fare disappeared elsewhere. Zuji and every other travel agency have always honored a fare once a confirmation and a ticket number have been issued. Never an issue before.

However, the situation here is NOT a fare mistake, but a routine fare increase from the airline. I may sympathize with an online travel agency refusing to take a loss because it sold a ticket that an airline subsequently refused to sell at that price, but that does not look like the situation here. It appears as if Travelocity may be not correctly increasing the costs of tickets as the airline increases prices at the time of sale. Not a fare mistake, and not something that should be Travelocity's customer's problem. By the time a customer learns what has happened, the ticket availability and pricing would often be even worse than the "should-have-been-priced" fare at the time of sale.

I would love to hear from Travelocity as to what their take on the situation is.
Is this is a "one-of" screw-up and not their normal policy? Or are they actually unable to accurate price ticket sales in real time, and expect their customer to eat fare increases? Any takers from Travelocity?

7Continents

Amen to that - I too find that if I have to go off an airline/hotel site, Expedia is universally better than Travelocity, as a matter of fact I just bought a buy 3 get 1 free at a Ritz Carlton property in the Caribbean. I made sure I noted the hotel reservation confirmation # (different than the Expedia itinerary #) and called the res. line as well as checked on the website. All came out confirmed and my trip was prepaid as promised. It saved me more than $400. I use Expedia only as a last resort but I've never been burned. I find Travelocity quite restricted in general.