This is a copy of a comment I left for the CEO of Orbitz:
Mr. Harford, CEO of Orbitz,
I have a serious problem with your company. I had previously purchased a ticket for use in November of 2008, however was unable to make my trip. I called your company who assured me that I would be able to use the credit to purchase another ticket with the same airline if I used it by September of 2009.
Two days ago on February, Friday 13, 2009 I called and booked a flight from Anchorage Alaska to San Francisco through Salt Lake city and back, paying the difference in the ticket cost and other associated fees at that time.
I got the flight booked and even picked seats for the flight and was assured an itinerary would be sent out at once so I could make arrangements with other parties I need to contact in San Francisco. Upon checking my email the next
day I noticed the itinerary was still not there, so I called again and was assured the flight was booked, and that the itinerary would be sent out as soon as your customer service rep hung up on their end of the phone.
Well, I went about my business trusting that your service reps would be true to their word, however I later checked once more, and it was still not there so I called again and was assured that by Sunday morning it would be in my email. Sunday arrived and still no email from Orbitz. Sunday the 15th is the day I was supposed to contact several people in the San Francisco area in order to make arrangements for specialized equipment related to my visit to the area. I called a total of four times on the evening of the 15th with the following results.
Call #1 - I was told that there was a ticket but that the ticked had not been fully booked. (How is that possible? I also had a very difficult time understanding the very heavy accent on the other end of the line as well as problems with the phone lines cutting in and out.) As I was trying to sort out the problem I was hung up on.
Call #2 - I was referred to three different people, none of who I could understand well, who informed me that there was a ticked booked, but that it takes up to 48 hours for me to get an itinerary. I explained that I had been waiting for 48 hours. Then your representatives tried to tell me that my email account was not working, the very same email account that I had just been reading recently received emails on. I assured her that my email was working, but also when I commented to my wife that I was no longer going to do business with your company in the future, I was then abruptly hung up on by her.
Call #3 - I was told by another customer service rep that I could barely understand or hear due to bad phone lines, that now there was no ticket on my record at all. And that there was no record of me booking a flight. I asked to speak to a supervisor, whereupon I waited on hold for ten minutes and was hung up on before being able to speak to one.
Call #4 - My wife actually made this call as by this time I was in no mood to deal with the substandard customer service and mistreatment I had received thus far. She called the number provided on your website, asked for a customer service supervisor and had been held on hold for over an hour with no one even coming on to the phone lines to tell her that she will be taken care of sometime in the near future. When someone finally came on the phone my wife was informed by "Corrine" that the itinerary
was posted on a third party site not even affiliated with Orbitz, which I had not been informed of, by either your companies website
or your customer service representatives which I had tried to deal with previously.
There had been no attempt to solve the small problem I had originally by your regular customer service representatives, which, was just wanting a copy of my flight itinerary. And the fact that my Itinerary was posted to a third party website without my knowledge or permission is inexcusable. I am beyond incensed at my treatment by your company, your lack of accountability for your poor customer service and to be sure that this is not something that happens to others I will be posting copies of this message to you, the CEO of Orbitz to the local and National Better Business Bureaus, as well as all of the many sites now available on the internet which detail your companies long history of substandard customer care and lack of business ethics.
Should you care to respond to my complaints you may do so at
[email protected]
Rest assured however that whatever you send will be forwarded to all my friends, acquaintances, business relationships and again to the many websites which have detailed your companies history of bad business practices toward your customers.
