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

By: George

George — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 21:17:16 +0000

@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.

By: Carver

Carver — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:52:31 +0000

@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.

By: barbie45

barbie45 — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 12:12:00 +0000

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.

By: George

George — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:36:17 +0000

@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”.

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Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:04:33 +0000

[...] • Want fast action on a travel complaint? Try DOT’s new site [...]

By: barbie45

barbie45 — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:33:27 +0000

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.

By: George

George — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:33:01 +0000

@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.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:36:10 +0000

@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??

By: George

George — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:07:05 +0000

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.

By: SirWired

SirWired — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:29:15 +0000

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.