BOOKING TRAVEL ONLINE HAS BECOME DE RIGUEUR.
Conventional travel agencies, long since stripped of commissions by struggling airlines, can’t compete with Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz and the weakened granddaddy of them all, Priceline. After all, call your old agency to book a flight to Europe and what’s their best shot? Go online and throw it into the lap of Expedia or Travelocity. Sweetening the pot, the airlines constantly compete directly with these parvenu semi-agencies by offering online discounts.
Planning our December trip to Scandinavia and France, my wife naturally booked the Florida-Stockholm leg and a return from Paris, direct with Continental, which was offering a hugely discounted business/first deal. But what about intermediate bits?
We’ve been in 100-plus countries but never in Estonia or Latvia. So why not enlist Travelocity for Stockholm-Tallin-Riga-Paris? Booked easily in May, $3,531.54 for two seats, the online reservation brought not only a confirmation but tickets for each of six flight legs, FedExed because these flights require paper tickets.
All was well until Aug. 30. Oops: Two e-mails from Travelocity. The first one:
Thank you for booking your travel plans with Travelocity.com. Unfortunately, we were unable to process your reservation because the airline did not confirm your requested flights. Please contact our customer service center as soon as possible to complete your reservation. To expedite your call, please provide the customer service agent with your Trip ID. We are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In the USA: 888-709-5983. Since the airline did not confirm your reservation, we cannot guarantee your fare. We look forward to assisting you in completing your reservation. Thank you, Travelocity.com
The second one:
Thank you for booking your travel reservations with Travelocity.com. The airline has recently made a change to your flight schedule and/or flight numbers. Please contact us immediately. We are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Please call us at 888-709-5983 and give the agent your 12 digit Trip ID 747172706986. Thank you, Travelocity.com
Now, why couldn’t Travelocity, contacting us three months after I had the tickets in hand, have hinted at what the problem might be?
Back to its Web site. Coolly, there Travelocity told me the airline wouldn’t confirm our flight, therefore we weren’t booked. Huh? Which airline? Which of the six legs?
Margo called Travelocity at 6 a.m. to take timely advantage of its “24-hour service.” Wandering, wandering through voice-activated menu choices…then a connection with an outsourced “customer service” voice, pleasant but totally incapable of even understanding my questions. Aah, gimme a supervisor. Gee, nice supervision: “The airlines cannot confirm your reservation. Hold, please.” After holding for over 10 minutes, connected with another department in another country. Oh, so that’s it: One of the booked airlines is no longer operating. What alternative arrangements exist? Again on hold. Ten, 11 minutes. “Please wait.” Again on hold. Forget it. Total elapsed time before Margo hung up: one hour and 10 minutes.
Later that morning the same kind person called back to tell us that no alternative bookings were available, and did we want to cancel the reservation? She said Travelocity would certainly refund “the full price — $3,200.” Hold it there, lady. Why forfeit both the trip and more than $300 for the insult? Again on hold.
Ah! Actual English English. Travelocity’s U.K. representative was both courteous and persistent. She told me to FedEx the tickets and proof of what we paid (apparently they don’t keep this kind of record) and they’d issue a total refund. We did as asked, at an additional cost of $42 for the FedEx.
But now what? What to do between Stockholm and Paris? Let Expedia give it a shot.
OK, here’s almost the same schedule for only $200 more than the original ticket. What the heck, everybody probably had a rate increase since the original booking in May. We booked it and got a confirming message:
Thank you for booking your trip with Expedia.com. You can view your itinerary online at http://www.expedia.com/pub/agent.dll?qscr=open&itid=1 Your tickets will be delivered within 2-3 business days from the date of purchase (excluding weekends and holidays).
Alas, jubilation was short-lived. Within an hour and a half, a new phone message over boiler-room background sounds asked us to call Expedia “for an important message.” The phone callback number was neatly cut off in mid-sentence but on the computer was an additional e-mail from Expedia:
Dear Expedia Customer: Thank you for using Expedia.com. We have received an unconfirmed response on your reservation. This means that the airline has not acknowledged the flight and/or fare that you originally purchased. We have attempted to restore the original flights and have been unsuccessful Without confirmation from the airline, we are unable to ticket this reservation. Please call us at 1-800-EXPEDIA as soon as possible so that we can work with you to make alternate arrangements. Unless you call within 72 hours of receiving this e-mail, your reservation will automatically cancel. Thank you for choosing Expedia.com.
Again, phone calls, on hold, long wait…then they disconnected. All right, then, since reservations will automatically be canceled within 72 hours, let’s just let the 72 hours pass uneventfully…and expediently.
Air Gorilla? Nope: “Sorry, but no fares were found for your selected itinerary.” Sigh. No monkeying around with Air Gorilla.
Enough already. We simply went back to Expedia and booked each individual leg separately. Not only was this totally successful, but we found nonstop flights in place of their proposed two-airline transfers. And oh…bookings were $3,017 for two people, saving more than $500.
Are you asking, “But why bother with a trip up there in December?” Why, to give me grist for the words you just read, that’s why. That’s expeditious for both of us.
HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS (www.herschellgordonlewis.com) is the principal of Lewis Enterprises in Fort Lauderdale, FL. He consults with and writes direct response copy for clients worldwide. His 29th book, “Open Me Now,” has just been published. Another recent title is his new personal favorite, the curmudgeonly titled “Asinine Advertising.” Among his other books are “On the Art of Writing Copy” (third edition), “Marketing Mayhem” and “Effective E-mail Marketing.”
Network
