Question: I’ve been having some problems with an airline reservation, and was wondering if you could help me. I recently had to cancel a reservation I had made through Travelocity. I spent eight hours on the phone with their incompetent customer service agents trying to use the credit I received to reschedule another flight on the same airline.
Travelocity finally gave me a flight and a confirmation number, but when I checked the airline Website, it hadn’t been ticketed yet. I don’t want to get to the airport and find we have no tickets and can’t fly. I spoke to Travelocity about this again last night, and was promised an email “within four to eight hours” with a resolution. I haven’t received a response.
Travelocity has charged my credit card $2,700 for tickets I don’t have. I can’t deal with its customer service department again. I’m at my wits end. Help! — Martha Schmidt, Sykesville, Md.
Answer: Travelocity should have changed your reservation quickly instead of keeping you on the phone for eight hours. When it promised you a response within four hours, it should have given you one.
At this point in my answer, I normally outline Travelocity’s missteps and then suggest a few things you might have done differently. But let me start with you this time.
Based on your letter — the fact that you preferred talking to someone on the phone instead of dealing with a Website — I think you may have booked your airline tickets through the wrong company. Travelocity is an online travel agency. That means for best results, reserve your trip through Travelocity.com.
You could have canceled your reservation online by clicking on the “Your Account” link at the top of the home page, logging in, selecting “Check Current Reservation” and then clicking “Cancel Reservation.”
If you don’t want to do that, why not use a travel agent next time? Sure, a human agent might charge a booking fee, and may not always have the lowest price, but that person will be there when you need to make a change. You will almost certainly not have to talk to a company representative for eight hours.
That’s not to say anything Travelocity did was excusable. Its well-publicized “guarantee” would leave any reasonable traveler with the impression that problems are dealt with quickly. “If something isn’t right, don’t let it ruin your trip,” it says. “Call us immediately instead! We’re here 24/7 to work with our partners to make it right, right away. Our customer care professionals are ready to help.”
I guess it all depends what your definition of “right away” is.
I asked Travelocity to take another look at your case. When you first contacted Travelocity by phone to apply the unused tickets to a new itinerary, the company didn’t receive a confirmation from the airline. Travelocity rebooked a similar itinerary with nonstop flights on a separate reservation, which accounted for the delay. “In the spirit of the Travelocity Guarantee, we waived our exchange fees on both bookings,” a company representative told me.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
To rebook a ticket using a cancelled reservation, my experience has been to go through the phone and contact the travel agency (Orbitz and Expedia in my cases). However, there is an alternative to rebook your ticket – go directly to the airline and rebook with them. I found this out after being given the run-around by Expedia.
I needed to make a change to my flight, and although I could see a flight combination which worked for my schedule, Expedia could not find this information and insisted that the flights I was looking at was sold out. I gave up, booked a new reservation on Orbitz, then held on to my Expedia credit.
A month later, I called US Airways (please, no groans) and asked if I could use the funds associated with the confirmation code/cancelled flight. They applied the full value of the cancelled reservation to the new reservation, charged me $150 on my credit card, and I was done. This ONLY works if the full value of the new ticket is more than the old reservation value – otherwise you’ll lose the remaining credit.
This happened a few days ago, so this method is still valid – and I saved the $30 reticketing fee from Expedia.
I am having a similiar problem with Travelocity and would never use them again or reccommend anyone else use them. We booked airline reservations 3 months ago on Travelocity.com. At that time they charged our credit card and issued paper tickets. I am trying to make a change on the outbound flight and am unable to. The flights were booked through Delta and Delta tells me that the tickets have not been paid for by Travelocity therefore they are unable to change the reservations. Delta tells me that I have to go through Travelocity. Travelocity tells me that the tickets have been paid but that I have to go through Delta to make changes. When I talked to a Travelocity agent on the phone today she was unable to help me and finally put me on hold which lasted 40 minutes and then I was disconnected. When I called back the agent at Travelocity was again unhelpful and did not seem to know what I was talking about. She kept wanting to cancel the whold tirp instead of making a change to the outbound flight. I am totally frustrated with Travelocity and it appears the only way out of this is to purchase new tickets.