Travelocity Avoid Travelocity Internet

This is our account of the most frustrating experience we have ever had with any company, ever. In December 2005 we invited family to visit us in Canada and booked a flight through Travelocity.com from Mexico City to Vancouver Canada. The online booking process seemed simple and the price was fair. Three and half months later, all seemed well until we attempted to arrange seating on the plane and discovered that the tickets had been cancelled.

I phoned Travelocity and was told that there was a problem with our credit card that led to the cancellation. This was hard to believe since our credit card was charged the full amount on Dec 28 2005 and we paid the bill promptly. We really had to scramble to get alternate tickets on the correct dates to match our resort booking and ended up arranging a flight from within Mexico. Our family members arrived, loved Canada, a good time was had by all.

LET THE MADNESS BEGIN.. Now I'm not a big fan of paying twice for the same service so I fully expected a refund from Travelocity since they charged us, we paid them, but they never delivered the tickets having cancelled them without our knowledge. I phoned again on April 11 2006 and they stated that a refund had been processed way back on Jan 3 2006. I checked our credit card statements and found no such refund. They then stated that a refund would take 30 days. (Get used to hearing that by the way, everything this company does seems to take 30 days.) 35 days later I phoned again only to be told I would have to wait another 10 to 15 days. I continued to phone them periodically over the next few weeks. Each time I was directed to a call center in some far away place, (sounded like India). After many calls I noticed a pattern in their language that made me feel like their only goal at the call center was to delay, defer blame, deny responsibility, in short, to avoid at all costs having to issue a refund. It was absolutely infuriating.

I gave up trying to get them to do the right thing and filed a dispute with my credit card company. They finally coughed up a refund in July 2006, 7 (SEVEN!!) months after the initial charge. However, the airline charged us a cancellation fee of 100 dollars per ticket, which meant we would be out 300 dollars for the three tickets we purchased and fully intended to use had they not been cancelled without our consent. The seven month delay came during a time when our Canadian dollar was gaining value fast against the US dollar and as a result our refund in Canadian dollars was actually short approximately 200 dollars for a total of 500 dollars. This is what it cost us in actual dollars for the mistake of doing business with Travelocity.com. If I include the time spent on the phone trying to get someone to take responsibility for this it would jump into the thousands. My advice: Go to your local travel agent; someone with a desk you can pound on if things go bad. It's well worth the extra few dollars rather than enduring the freak show and monetary loss we went through!!

Dell
mission, British Columbia
Canada