To everyone out there who use Orbitz.com to make airline / travel arrangements: Beware! Use it at your own risk and do all the legwork before you show up at the airport.

I bought an airline ticket back in February to go from Oakland, CA to Kona, Hi for my vacation in May through Orbitz.com on Aloha Airlines. They charged my credit card for the airline and car rental reservations and I got my confirmation number. Then I went out of U.S. for a few months to visit relatives overseas, and came back not realizing that Aloha airlines had gone out of business while I was away.

I received no notification from Orbitz.com letting me know that my flight that I paid for months ago was cancelled, and I needed to make alternative arrangements to get to Hawaii. Needless to say it was tremendously stressful and nerve wrecking the first day of my vacation when I showed up at the airport, thinking that I had a ticket to fly to Kona and had nothing. I literally scrambled at the airport begging and searching for a last minute ticket that ended up costing me over $1700 in addition to the $500 ticket that I already paid for.

My vacation to Hawaii was completely ruined. When I called Orbitz.com's customer service line and explained to them what happened and asked about the lack of notification on my cancelled flight, the customer service staff's response was: "well, too bad...you should've checked the flight status yourself and KNOW that Aloha Airlines went out of business."

How is it possible that a business like Orbitz.com with such crappy service and such irresponsible business practice stay in business? If Orbitz.com has no problem advertising and selling "available" flight reservations to people, why is it that they can't notify those paid customers when their flights get cancelled? It is not as if Orbitz.com doesn't have my contact information; a simple e-mail from them would have prevented all my scrambling and last minute headaches.

If Orbitz.com can claim that they have no responsibility what-s0-ever to keep me informed of my purchased flight, why do I need them? Why doesn't everyone just contact & purchase the tickets straight from the airlines themselves? What service is Orbitz.com providing us other charge us for bogus flights that don't exist and make us pay more for another ticket?

It truly angers me that I went through Orbitz.com and still had to do so much of my own legwork in order to ensure I have a seat on the plane; it's just wrong. Orbitz.com really needs to step up and take care of the people who book flights and travel arrangements with them and take care of them. From the many posts on this site regarding Orbitz.com, it doesn't seem like my case is an isolated case; plenty of people have complained about its horrible service. From this experience it's safe to say that I will never use Orbitz.com again.