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Want fast action on a travel complaint? Try DOT’s new site

January 21, 2010

Last week’s story about how the Transportation Department has adopted a more pro-consumer attitude didn’t include the recent fine against United Airlines and news of its new Web site.

But make no mistake: This isn’t your grandpa’s DOT. Just ask Natalie Parker, who read my column and decided to see for herself if the government meant business.

My husband and I were looking for a flight between San Francisco and Paris. We searched on Orbitz as well as many other sites.

Orbitz returned several $1,100 total per person fares in response to our query. However, when clicking to select one from the list, we were given the message that the fares were unavailable and subsequently given a list of new fares, all starting at $1,300 total per person.

Normally I thought this would be a forgivable glitch, but it kept happening several times over the course of last week.

Parker isn’t alone. It’s even happened to me.

Anyway, on with the story …

I was annoyed enough yesterday when I checked again to submit a complaint on Orbitz’s online form as well as one with the DOT.

I love the DOT form because it allows you to upload documents. I included screenshots.

This morning I got a voicemail from Orbitz customer service, saying that the DOT had forwarded my complaint to them. She left her name and a direct number. I called back and spoke to her. She said something about how the information wasn’t up to date and how they had removed whatever issue it was.

She then offered a $400 voucher to cover the difference in the fares, which I gladly accepted. She originally offered a $200 voucher for me, but when I explained I was looking to book two tickets, she increased to $400 — no questions asked.

I can only surmise that the DOT received my complaint and forwarded it to Orbitz to give them a chance to fix it before they started investigating. I didn’t think I would receive any response, let alone the very next day. I’m very pleased with the results and we are going to use the voucher to book the tickets to Paris.

What can I say? Nice work, DOT.

The Department of Transportation’s Aviation Consumer Protection Division has a staff of about 40 to handle mostly airline complaints, but they do track grievances against large travel agencies and occasionally will mediate the cases, as they did for Parker. However, car rental customers, cruise passengers and hotel guests are out of luck. At least for now.

I’m encouraged by DOT’s new mission. If you’ve complained to the Transportation Department recently, please let me know. I will be following this story closely.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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10 comments

  • SirWired

    It would be interesting to see if somebody could come up with a set of fair rules to cover fares going unavailable on you.

    On the one hand, the fare going “unavailable” is possibly used to cover up nothing more than a scam to rope in customers. On the other hand, it most certainly does happen that fares go up, seats sell, etc. between when a consumer does a price search and when they purchase.

    Perhaps a rule that a displayed fare should be good for 20 or 30 minutes, unless the flight runs out of seats entirely in that class of service would be a good choice.

  • George

    I can appreciate the frustration of the OP with the Orbitz site, and I think that the DOT’s recent consumer-friendly initiatives are good ones. But I also think that the OP’s rapid escalation of what might have been just a website glitch (which obviously wasn’t fixed for several weeks) to a DOT complaint was a bit unwarranted. Why not just try another site?

    After trying to find the same fare on another website, contacting the Orbitz web team would have been a more appropriate first step. Jumping to the top over the heads of people at Orbitz didn’t really give them a chance to fix the problem.

    It was a nice gesture for Orbitz to give the OP $400, when they probably didn’t need to.

  • Dave

    @George: When the consumer has a glitch of his own – typo in name, nickname instead of full legal name, click wrong date on the dropdown list, etc., the airlines insist on charging a change fee. They expect the consumer to get it right the first time, or pay. Should we expect anything less of them??

  • George

    @Dave: I think you’re right – the airlines should get it right the first time just as you say. With all of the ramp up of TSA rules for PNR/ID matching, I’m sure there are plenty of passengers who’ve experienced headaches faced with ticket change fees, as you point out, when an honest mistake is made during the purchases process.

    Fare codes pulled by sites like Orbitz (and the airlines’ own sites as well), can show up in search results and be gone before the customer has a chance to purchase it. But given the repeated bait and switch experienced by the OP, I had guessed it was an issue with the Orbitz website itself – maybe Orbitz was indeed finding a published fare code for her desired flights, but there weren’t any fare classes to book her seats into available.

  • http://http/aol.com barbie45

    George, the OP was smart. Why waste time dealing with a group of inept employees when you can reach the top right away? He was very clever in using DOT.

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  • George

    @barbie45: I fail to see how you have enough information to justify your statement that Orbitz employees are “inept”. Where is the information is this article that would lead you to believe that? Maybe I missed it, but I also don’t see how contacting the DOT required anyone to be “clever”.

  • http://http/aol.com barbie45

    George.the OP made several attempts through Orbitz.Also he did try another line. He was clever in contacting DOTand skipping right to the top. When you have a problem would you not prefer to go right to the top/. Many of these agencies outsource and I wonder about the competency of the workers. This assumption is based on the number of complaints I have seen from these agencies.

  • Carver

    @barbie45

    I respectfully disagree. It’s that type of thinking that causes the highly inefficient us vs. them attitude. Its why doctors practice defensive medicine, and attorneys fees skyrocket by sending out volumes of CYA letters. Instead of coming to the person and resolving it informally, we are now a society of running to the government, a lawyer, or whomever.

    Don’t get me wrong, if informal resolution doesn’t work then we have to avail outselves of these remedies, but it is a poor decision not to at least give the other side an opportunity to remedy the situation.

  • George

    @barbie45: According to the article above, the OP only made one attempt to contact someone at Orbitz (as well as a simultaneous complaint to the DOT). This information is the basis for my argument.

    We all would like to have our concerns addressed as quickly and efficiently as possible, I agree. But I guess, in this particular case, I don’t think the DOT needed to get involved from the very beginning. Furthermore, I’m going to guess that a significant fraction of people who use sites like Orbitz are happy with what they get. After all, the ones who are unhappy tend to be the loudest.

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