I booked a trip to Las Vegas at the Luxor hotel. I was charged $150.00 a night for a Pyramid Deluxe room. I found out that the regular hotel rate is $129.00 a night. The Pyramid room was not inhabitable. It had mold growing, wall paper peeling, and a stench that could not be killed.

I was on a non-smoking floor, but there were ashtrays in the hallway. I took pictures to confirm everything I am saying here. I called Orbitz customer care and all they said was that I should have read the disclaimer. Orbitz was completely unwilling to do anything to make this right! DO NOT BOOK WITH ORBITZ! You'll get a better rate booking directly through the hotel.

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.

Sincerely,
Edgar V. Branscum

Dear Orbitz,

I write to you today to tell you about the horrible experience I had with your service this past year. I have used Orbitz in the past without a glitch and I was surprised that in this time of economic downturn your customer service has declined to these levels. Not only did your supervisors in Orbitz TLC misguide me but also I had to resort to literally begging for a solution so that I could make it home in time to visit an ailing family member.
On August 25th 2008 I purchased an itinerary through your website from Seattle to Montevideo, Uruguay departing on December 24th 2008. The original itinerary included stops in Los Angeles (LAX), Panama City (PTY) and final destination Montevideo. The return was Montevideo, Miami, Denver, and Seattle. (At the end of this letter I have attached all itineraries for your reference).
On October 23rd I received an email notifying me that there had been a change in my itinerary that read the following:
“The airline has notified us of a change to your itinerary. If the updated itinerary below is acceptable, no further action is necessary.”
At this time the itinerary change was very minor and as the email indicated I took no further action.
On December 3rd 2008 I received a second email notifying me that there had been a change in my itinerary, once again the email read:
“The airline has notified us of a change to your itinerary. If the updated itinerary below is acceptable, no further action is necessary.”
This time the flight itinerary had significantly changed, not only was an extra leg added (I now had to do SEA->SFO->LAX) but an extra 5 hours of travel had been added as well. I understand that this change was the airline and not Orbitz fault. The email said no further action was necessary but I wanted to know if I could some how move around the flights so lessen the travel time.
My first contact with Orbitz TLC was on December 9th 2008 where I was on hold for no less than 45 minutes until I was able to talk to the international travel agent. After explaining the situation she said that there was nothing Orbitz could really do because the original flight I was booked on was canceled so I assumed I just had bad luck. At this time she informs me that she noticed that I have paper tickets and that these would have to be exchanged due to the change in flights, she informed me to go to the United ticketing office to exchange them since Orbitz could no longer do anything about them because I was travelling in less than 14 days from the date (It was 13 days at the time). I asked the representative multiple times if I could overnight mail the tickets to Orbitz to get the exchange done, she said no it was to late I had to deal directly with the airline. I drove to my nearest United Airlines office (45 minutes away) to get the tickets exchanged. At the United office I was informed that they could not exchange the tickets because COPA Airlines owned the tickets and that I would have to go to their offices. The next day I called COPA Airlines and they informed me that to exchange the tickets I would have to present them in person, when I asked where their nearest office was they said Los Angeles (I am located in Seattle, the tickets I bought would take me to Los Angeles but I could not board the plane with them). At this time I call Orbitz back and they tell me I have to deal with the airlines directly since “the ticket is a paper ticket and out of our control” (after 15 years of using Travel Agents I have never heard this before). I call United Airlines back and they tell me that COPA owns the ticket and they cannot reissue the ticket unless Orbitz request a code from COPA Airlines to do so.
At this point days on hold with Orbitz and multiple airlines have gone by with me calling every day to see how I can solve this issue. On December 19th 2008 (5 days before travel) I am in a desperate situation with invalid paper tickets in my hand and call Orbitz TLC once again and ask to talk to a supervisor. After once again an hour of being on hold I finally am transferred with Lorie (Employee ref: MTF). After explaining my situation she indicates that I should have sent the paper tickets back to Orbitz, I explain that I had tried to do so but the previous agent said it was not possible. She indicated that now it was definitely to late to send the tickets back that my best option was to go to the United counter on the 24th the day of my flight and hope (her actual words) that they would honor the ticket. As you can imagine at this point in time I am desperate, I have an ill family member that I must get to, I purchased a ticket for it 4 months in advance (a guaranteed ticket not a raffle ticket were hope should be involved) and she is telling me that I might or might not be able to get on this flight.
At this time I have my partner calling United to see what they can possibly do. They tell me that this happens all the time when dealing with Orbitz and that its sad that the customers get stuck in this limbo. He tells us that the only thing that can be done is that I can re purchase the ticket so that they can honor the reservation and then either submit to Orbitz for reimbursement or take Orbitz to small claims court.
After 3 hours on the phone with Lorie pleading for anything she can do for me she finally agrees to re-issue the ticket if I sent them back overnight to Orbitz HQ.
The next morning (December 20th 2008) I send the tickets to the Minnesota Office and call Orbitz TLC once again. My call was initiated at 10:03am PST as soon as somebody picked up I requested a supervisor. At 10:45am PST the supervisor Libby (Employee ref: MZB) picked up the phone and verified that I had sent back the tickets when I provided her with the tracking numbers. At this time she informed me that if I wanted the tickets I would have to incur a charge of $47 dollars. I explained that I thought this charge was unfair given that I already paid for shipping twice for these tickets already (from Orbitz, to Orbitz). She repeated that if I wanted the tickets I would have to pay this fee. In the end I paid this fee since I had no other option. She said she could refund the Orbitz fee charged to me, I explained that this was still less than what I was paying in shipping costs alone for an Orbitz mess up (I could have saved this money if I had sent the tickets back when I asked to the first time).
My complaints with Orbitz are the following: Today January 30th my credit card still has not received any credit of any sort as Libby promised. I spent over 8 hrs on the phone trying to get this issue resolved. If I had not called Orbitz TLC to inquire about a possible flight change I would have never found out that my tickets were invalid and I would probably have had to pay out of pocket for the entirety of the ticket, again. Supervisor Lorie MTF actually told me that I could hope they accepted my ticket, I found this statement ridiculous. At no point did Orbitz try to help me solve my problem, I had to beg, get angry and insist for hours before anybody offered to help me solve this issue.
I hope your company never puts anybody else through this nightmare.

Sincerely,
XXXX

Orbitz Price Assurance is extremely misleading. Their site states that if you find a lower price on any other website on if the price drops, they will refund the difference. I had booked a flight and hotel package for 2 people from San Francisco to Honolulu and the price was $801 per person. When I went back to the site 2 weeks later, the same exact package had dropped it's price to $699 per person. I called the Orbitz customer service department, and they told me that I was not getting a refund because the Price Assurance is only if you booked the flight and hotel SEPARATELY and not in a package deal. I asked if there was any way they would honor the lower price, and their answer was NO!! There is nowhere on their site that states this price assurance is only for flights or hotels booked solo. Their policy is misleading and not good business. I will never book from this site again! Buyer Beware!!

I just had a harrowing and frustrating experience with Orbitz. I booked a Christmas flight on Qatar Airways through Orbitz about eight months ago. They sent me a paper ticket. Then, I received an email from Orbitz saying there had been a change to my itinerary. When I called Orbitz to ask what I should do, they asked me to send the paper ticket back to them. When I asked repeatedly what else I should do, they said "Nothing; we'll take it from here." I subsequently received an electronic form from Orbitz with the new itinerary, which I assumed was my electronic ticket. However, when we went to the airport to check in, the airline said that the record says I was issued a paper ticket, and therefore they could not board us without the paper ticket. Calls to Orbitz from the airport (which took hours) were of no avail. After admitting they misled me, Orbitz now claims that they told me to call back after mailing the paper ticket. In the end, I have had to pay an additional 80 percent of the ticket's cost to get on a flight two days later. I spent countless hours on the phone with Orbitz. The staff were singularly incompetent (they contradicted themselves repeatedly).

I would like to know if others have had similar experiences, and what recourse we might have.