In July my husband & I purchased 2 tickets from Austin to Bozeman, Montana for the holidays - our round-trip flights cost $915 in total, just over $450 per person. On 11/29 my family asked me to re-forward the flight arrangements which I had not looked at since August, the last time I was emailed a flight change notification. When I logged into Orbitz to retrieve the itinerary and clicked on my "Bozeman Trip", the details revealed that there were no connecting flights from Denver to Bozeman on the outbound trip, though the return trip was still intact. I looked back at all the emails I had from Orbitz, all of which had the correct connecting flights. When I clicked "back" on the website, before my eyes the "Bozeman Trip" became the "Denver Trip".
I called customer service and was told that US Airways had canceled my flight and we needed to seek alternate travel arrangements which Orbitz attempted to help me secure. The rep repeatedly stated that they would offer a refund and I continually replied that we were adamant about continuing our holiday plans, we still had most of our trip intact and was optimistic that we should be able to work it out - worst case we need to spend a night in Denver and take a flight to Bozeman the next day.
After an hour and a half on the phone, the rep finally told me that the problem was US Airways flights were very full and given that the issue with my itinerary was US Airways we were needing to work with them, however he was seeing numerous flights through other carriers at 'much cheaper' rates than what we had paid. The best option he said was to cancel the itinerary and rebook through another airline and this was actually going to save me money compared to my original ticket - so I agreed and we canceled the flights. Immediately after canceling the phone was disconnected.
When I called back, now with no flights 2 weeks from our travel dates, the agent noted that tickets were currently at about $850 per person - compared to $915 for 2 tickets we had paid. The agent either blatantly lied to get me to agree to cancel or mistakenly compared the per ticket price to the total price - either way, the agent misrepresented the prices.
Very, very long story short -8 hours on the phone collectively with at least a dozen reps in America, 4 "supervisors" in the Philippines and 1 "manager"- Orbitz's position is that this is the airline's fault and since I allowed him to cancel they are not responsible to provide any recourse for us. They offered $100 towards future travel and that is it.
The customer service was abysmal. Each of the supervisors stated that they would call me back since they were working with the airline to reach a resolution and this is time consuming. Not one of them ever called me back. They also each gave me their name and said I could ask for them once I had been transferred to the supervisor department - this I tried numerous times and was consistently told that they can't track people down. The people in the US were apologetic and friendly, but have absolutely no authority or ability to help and the "supervisors" in the Philippines are hostile, unapologetic and robotic.
It cost my family $2300, an incremental $1400 from the price we had originally paid six months ago.in addition, I spent an entire day dealing with these people - a lost day of work which I have to make up for on the weekend. Now, looking for places to voice my complaint (because I have received no responses from the emails I sent to Orbitz customer service) I see countless experiences like this and worse. I am in complete shock that a company can treat people this way and I don’t understand how it’s acceptable.
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