Anyone out there Wired readers? I was surfing through the site this afternoon and found their latest award nominations. They have this things called the Rave Award. Ang Lee was nominated as was BMWfilms.com. For us travel buffs, Orbitz was nominated. It is now the fastest growing site in history and something like the most visited in June. I was reading a few weeks back about how Travelocity, Expedia, etc. were really fighting against them. Not a surprise based on the award nomination above that shows how well received the site has been by consumers. What do you guys think?

You may love that it searches through all the airlines and offers great options - but have you ever tried to book a ticket through it? I tried in mid-May to get tickets for 4 people from CMH to ISP for a trip at the end of June, and it was an ordeal. What should have taken 20 minutes on Orbitz turned into several hours of searching other websites and calling the Orbitz customer service line. I found a great price and good flight times for the trip, and when I went to book the flight, I got a message that said something to the effect of "sorry, but while you were searching, seats at this price sold out." Well, I was bummed, but I figured it can happen, so I did another search. It brought up the exact same sold-out flight that it had just told me was unavailable. So I waited about 4 hours and tried again, it was still bringing up the sold out flight!

I called customer service, and a less than helpful woman said they updated their system "very regularly" (but she couldn't tell me exactly how often) and acted like it was my fault for some reason. Granted, there are good CSRs and bad CSRs, and I probably just happened to get a bad one, but the entire experience (both the unavailable fare and the rude CSR) really soured my feelings towards Orbitz.

I'm sure that some of you out there have had great success at getting tickets on Orbitz. Maybe they have gotten better at updating their system and showing when flights are sold out. However, from my personal experience, I much prefer the sites www.qixo.com and www.sidestep.com. I've never had problems booking any fare through those sites.

Just my two cents.

Thanks for your reply! I haven't had that experience with the site, but stuff like that happens I'm sure. They may still be working out some bugs in their system like most fairly new sites experience in the first few months.