Cheaptickets.com Wrong hotel, wrong airport transfer, wrong tour information... Internet

Please be very careful when you are booking anything through cheaptickets.com (or orbitz.com, since the two are apparently one and the same company), especially if you are booking a vacation in Mexico. 

Few pointers:
1. airport transfer. Total disaster! Mexico hotels are divided into zones and, it just so happens, all bookings are automatically given a suggestion for a Zone 1 hotel transfer!! Well, this is the CHEAPEST transfer, so I see their logic here. In my case, this was the only available transfer and I only came to realize that the hotel I booked was in Zone 6 when I landed in Cancun!!! Their travel company partner, Gray Line, proceeded to charge me $156 in addition to the already paid $66 or they would not take me to my hotel. They made me call cheap tickets on their little barely functioning cell phone before I was allowed to get into a van. Just imagine, you have just landed at your destination and ready to start your vacation... and the first thing you are forced to do is to stand in hot sweaty weather in the middle of the airport pick up area and make phonecalls to an internet travel company! The worst thing is, after I reported this, the company 'supervisor' took over a month to 'investigate' this problem, only to tell me that it was all my fault in the end and they are not willing to reimburse the difference!!!

2. when you arrive at your hotel, beware! you may not be actually housed at the hotel you paid for!!! I was placed in a sister hotel (that just happens to be consistently cheaper than the one I booked). Again, I knew something was wrong when upon finally arriving to the hotel lobby, the greeter could not find my name on the list. Yup, never a good sign. Turns out, my name was on the list of an adjacent hotel! That's right, the cheaper one. Per cheaptickets.com, this was, too, somehow my fault. I have yet to hear from them how I managed to screw this one up! Especially when my travel documents spell out the correct name of the hotel...

3. please save yourself the trouble and DO NOT book tours online. They make it seem like you are saving money. Please don't fall for it. For example, I booked a combo tour to Chichen Itza and Isla Mujeres. For the Chichen Itza, apparently, the only thing included is the bus ride and the tour guide. You will have to pay in cash for the entry into the ruins (which entails a LONG line!!! and another !$20 per person). For the Isla Mujeres tour... well, I am not sure what was included in the price of that one. in addition to the payment online at time of booking,  I was asked to also pay for ground transportation, reef fee, docking fee, and some other fee (total of ~$100 per person). Ridiculous? Yes! 

My case had been escalated to the level of a supervisor handling it. I was told to expect a phone call every friday with updates on the status of my case. I have NOT gotten a single phonecall. When I took the initiative and called myself, I was sternly told NOT to call and to just wait to be called. I then started receiving emails from time to time telling me that someone is still working on my case. Finally, I received an obviously truncated 45 second voicemail telling me it was all my fault and no refunds will be made, but that cheaptickets is willing to... Well, the message cuts off at that. I haven't heard back. I emailed asking someone to call me back so that I can hear the rest of that sentence. Obviously, I can't call them back myself - I was told multiple times that that would not work in my favor. So that's where I stand now... Oh, did I mention that I spent 2 hours in the hotel lobby using my google voice account to make phonecalls to cheaptickets while on vacation? And that the customer service representative kept complaining about how loud the background noise was? Hmmm... Not much understanding to be expected from these people...