I made reservations for a round-trip domestic flight one month before my travel date. The charges were posted the day the reseervation was made and a confirmation email was sent to me.
A couple of days ago, I found out that there were availabilities on an earlier flight to my destination on the same carrier. I checked my confirmation email. It indicated that penalties would apply if I needed to change my reservation and that I should check with the airline to find out what the penalty was. They even provided a link to airline phone numbers. Unfortunately, the number they provided was wrong.
I called the airline and they told me that their penalty fee was $50. They also told me that they couldn't change my reservation for me, since I had an agreement with cheapoair.com. I would have to take it up with them.
Saturday and Sunday I left messages on their voicemail and email. I was starting to get irked that no one got in touch with me - I mean, people do travel on weekends. Customer Service needs to be available 7-days a week, if not 24/7.
On Monday morning I started calling them again. Their customer service # is in area code 917, which is a cell-phone code for New York City (kinda sketchy, right?), where I happen to live. I called several times. Their system automatically goes to voicemail after 3 and a half minutes. At 9:40, I got through to my first customer service rep.
I explained that I wanted to change my flight to an earlier time and that I had called the airline and was told that the penalty would be $50. She told me that the penalty would be $100. I told her she was ripping me off, but fine, go ahead and put it through.
At this point, she botched it up. She came back on the line to tell me that "it appears you are not confirmed for your return flight on Sunday. Would you like to return on Monday?" Well no, of course not! I had a confirmed reservation for Sunday and now you're going to tell me that you've screwed me over? I have to spend an extra day in a strange town, shell out for a hotel and car rental? No way. I asked to speak to her supervisor and she said that no one was available. I would have to wait for them to call me back.
In the meantime, I decided to call the airline to see what had happened. They were very friendly and courteous. They told me that when the rep tried to change my reservation, she had accidently unconfirmed my return flight. However, the airline still had one available seat on that flight. The airline rep told me that she could hold that seat specifically for me, while I sorted things out with cheapoair. Cheapoair would just have to contact the airline and confirm the information - pretty straightforward, right?
I continued calling cheapoair and continued to either get their voicemail, or an ineffectual service rep who would put me on hold for a supervisor, named "Richard" or "Raymond" who never appeared. Eventually, they would disconnect me, after about 15 or 20 minutes. So now i'm out a bunch of money for cell phone minutes and I've burned through one charge cycle on my home phone.
At one point, a service rep convinced me that I could leave the house, someone was working on it. I left the house to get some lunch. On my way, I continued to call them. I was speaking to one rep when I got an incoming call. I told the rep that I wanted to be put on hold and transferred to the supervisor, who undoubtedly would have hung up by the time I answered his call.
She put me on hold and then came back a few minutes later to tell me that he was now in a meeting. I gave her all the information I had compiled - the number for the airline, the contact person, etc. And asked her to pass it along. I told her that I had a deadline from the airline - they were going to hold those seats until 1 PM central time.
When I got home, I saw that I had an email message from "Raymond" saying they had tried to contact me but i was unavailable. The nifty thing about cheapo's website is that it allows you to register your questions or complaints and then it send you a copy of your text to your email. So I started to document my lack of progress. They never tried to contact me again.
I continued calling them through the rest of the afternoon with no luck and eventually ended up speaking to a supervisor at the airline who was aware of my situation. They confirmed my flights for the times I needed and charged me $50 penalty plus $43 because the price of the fare had gone up since I had last checked. Thank you Sun Country Airline - it was a pleasure dealing with you after my unpleasant experience with Cheapoair.
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