Recently my husband and i were planning a trip to South Carolina. I knew from past trips Delta offer a non-stop flight for about 650. I thought maybe I could beat that fare using a discount flight search engine. I entered our trip criteria—2 adults, evening, the dates leaving, returning, and the destinations.
Soon we received several offers from Orbitz, Expedia, etc. But, Hotwire had a banner ad flashing across the bottom of my screen offering the trip for 350. I couldn't believe my luck. I registered us both inputing personal and credit card information.
I saw the notice that said no refunds and no exchanges. I totally skipped about 3 pages of disclaimers. Yes, i thought it was weird that they would not tell me the airline, flight number or time until my credit card was processed.
As soon as my card was processed they told me we would be on a 6am flight. Huh, i requested evening, with a 3 hour layover in Washington. You have got to be kidding me. We would have needed to leave our house at 2:30am.
I called the customer service number immediately. After holding the line for about 6 hours, I was told there was nothing that could be done. Didn't I read the disclaimer which stated for this bargain fare they could place me on any flight that day. Eventually after about 24 hours of constant screaming, my husband was able to talk them into selling us regular tickets, at regular price. Their idea of regular price was 890, almost 300 dollars more per ticket than Delta's regular fare!
We took the flight, our plane was 3 hours late leaving PHL making us 3 hours late in Washington and therefore missing our connecting flight and spending 24 hours in washington. Talk about a horrible experience. Just remeber you get what you pay for.
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