NastyMcT : Alaskan Blogger

Daylight : 6:34 a.m. - 9:25 p.m.

Are there any real travel agents left??

I guess I’ll be finding out.  Online travel sites suck ass, if you’re trying to book anything other than a straight round-trip ticket, flying overseas, or actually need customer service. 

I jump through all the hoops, pick my multi-city flight segment by segment, *confirm* the flight and book it.  After entering all the payment information, I’m expecting a confirmation number, I get a message that there is a problem with the third segment of my flight, which is a domestic leg.  ”Choose another flight below”, so I do.  Same message.  At this point I check my bank account.  Yep, you guessed it.  TWO PENDING TICKET CHARGES. I’m livid.  Although the charges are pending, and aren’t subtracted from the balance (yet), I knew that they would be if I didn’t address it immediately.

I call Orbitz customer service.  The guy tells me that it wasn’t the last segment of my trip that was the problem, but the middle segment, which is to and from Copenhagen on SAS. The SAS flights for some reason could not be confirmed. This actually happened before when Sean’s ticket was booked, but through another site. I called SAS direct, and booked through them. So I ask the guy, in a not happy tone, why they are selling flights from an airline, when they cannot confirm the tickets??! So we walk through the reservation again, he tries to book it, and GUESS WHAT. CHARGE #3, and he still can’t confirm the ticket. He tries to put another flight together, using United instead of SAS for $400 MORE.  I said, “Uhhh yeah, and what’s the duration of that flight?” Guy: “22 hours”.

I don’t think so. I ask him about the three charges. He can’t access that information. Do I want to speak to customer service? Uhhhh yeah. A woman gets on the line, she’s as worthless at the first guy. It’s 4:30am, and I am not amused. She tries to call my banks customer service, to have the charges reversed I’m assuming, since amazingly she can’t access that information either.  Bank isn’t open yet (even though it’s 7:30am in Ohio where she’s supposedly calling).  She states that it’s a “soft” hold, and will drop off IN A FEW DAYS.  I told her that was UN-acceptable. She took the phone number for my local bank branch, and told me she would take care of it.  I wake up, and the money was deducted from the account!!!!

I called my bank, and had the charges reversed.

I’m obviously really pissed about this.  How can they charge you FULL ticket price, before confirming the tickets with the airlines? I can totally understand doing a test transaction for $1, or whatever, to confirm that the account is valid.  But I cannot understand, charging you full price for a ticket that is never confirmed.  And not only doing it once, but three times. WHO IS THEIR CREDIT CARD PROCESSING COMPANY?? 

My rant for the day.  Remember, if you use your credit or debit card with a Visa/Mastercard symbol, and something like this happens to you. CHARGE IT BACK. Dispute it. A company with a lot of chargebacks is looked upon negatively by credit card processors.

So is it worth saving $40 for a do-it-yourself online ticket? And potentially spending hours on the phone, transferred to horrible *customer service* agents? Having your bank account CLEANED OUT with duplicate “soft holds” for a few DAYS? I don’t think so.