Travelocity and AA.com - Worst Customer Service
It’s Friday morning and this time of the year is always a busy and stressful time for me. As I’m sure everyone does, I have way more going on at this time of the year than any other month. That said, I don’t need any more stress or snags in my plans or schedule. Wednesday night I came across a huge snag, error, disappointment…whatever you want to call it. I was up until 1:45am all thanks to Travelocity and American Airlines and their customer service (or lack thereof).
I actually wrote the following while I was on hold with these two companies on and off for over 3 hours and since I was so upset that evening, I decided not to publish it because I wanted to give them the opportunity to address this with me, but It’s now Friday morning and I have yet to hear from the customer relations department, so I figure I want to share my experience with all of my internet friends and maybe someone from Travelocity will respond to the letter I faxed to them at 1:30am on 12/13.
Here goes…
I have been sitting on hold trying to use a flight credit that was issued to my daughter this past July. At about 9:30pm I logged in to Travelocity to search for flights for a trip we are taking to Oregon. I figured it wouldn’t be too big of a deal. After all, I have a trip ID number, cancellation number, credit number and the name of the person I spoke with back on July 23rd.
It’s now 11:43pm (yes, over 2 hours later) During this time I have been on the phone with Travelocity three times and American Airlines twice. Currently I am sitting on hold with Travelocity waiting for a manager to pick up the phone. I called them at 11:21 and have been on hold hating Travelocity and hating the person that originally processed my credit and made some lame error that has resulted in this enormous waste of my time.
Here’s what’s happening…
I called Travelocity the first time because when I went to check out online, there was no option for me to use a flight credit. I spoke with a representative who transferred me to another representative who informed me that their system was down and I should call American Airlines to use my credit anyway. Fine.
I went to American’s site and found the ame flight for $20 less. Super. Same thing happened, at check out, there is no place for me to enter my credit code. So I called American, who transferred me to aa.com. That was pretty quick, so whatever. The rep at aa.com informed me that my credit code was coming up as UNK (Unknown) and I’d have to take it up with Travelocity.
Frustrated, but I understand that shit happens so I called Travelocity back and explained the problem, the rep there seemed to be investigating it and got back on the phone with me to tell me that it had to be processed through aa.com. She had called aa.com and told me she had an aa rep on the phone that said she could take care of me. Sounds easy, the two ladies spoke and one told the other my information and the other said she could help me. After holding with the aa rep while she investigated further, she got back on the line and told me the credit number I had isn’t really a credit number, it’s an itinerary number and it appears to be blank, so there is nothing she can do. She told me I had to call Travelocity to get this resolved.
At this point I’m extremely pissed. The tone I’m getting from the reps is insinuating to me that I don’t have a credit at all and at one point the woman implied that my daughter did use her ticket.
So it’s now 11:53, I’m still on hold with Travelocity from when I called them at 11:21 and asked to speak with a manager. Good to know managers keep customers on hold for 30 minutes.
The likelihood that I’ll use Travelocity again is zero seeing as this is the 2nd most horrible customer service experience I’ve ever had. The first (btw) was with my cable company a few years back when they shut our cable off after I called to cancel the internet. Our cable was off for almost a week with two young kids. No Nickelodeon, no Rugrats. It was horrible. The cable company at least gave me 3 months of free cable to compensate me. It’s doubtful that Travelocity will do anything, but we’ll see if the gnome makes appearance and takes care of me. So far no gnome in sight.
Now 11:59, hanging up and calling Travelocity back…again.
Now on hold again (12:10) talking to Travelocity rep ‘Marcus’ sounds like there is progress in sight. Bad news. Marcus came back and repeated the same thing the other Travelocity reps said, that I have to call aa.com to use the credit. I asked Marcus to please conference call with aa.com so I could avoid the he said she said fiasco. He was able to connect with Derik from aa.com who (with an ‘I don’t give a crap’) attitude told me he didn’t show the ticket at all and there was nothing he could do.
Marcus is now saying Travelocity cannot re-issue the ticket and that I’ll have to take it up with their customer relations department. He was kind enough to give me the Fax # 800-944-0005. Rather than writing a lengthy letter, maybe I’ll just copy and paste this blog post.
What I don’t get is that this credit is for about $700 or so. Travelocity is a multi-million dollar company that has left a customer of over 10 years lost in between a conflict between them and aa.com. Travelocity says they cannot re-issue the ticket and aa.com says they can’t find the credit. So were is my credit? Maybe the gnome took it?
It’s now 12:48pm, before I publish this article I’m going to give the Travelocity consumer relations department the benefit of the doubt and see if they can resolve by tomorrow.
Updated 12/20
Last night I received a survey to take about my recent experience with Travelocity’s customer service. Of course the review I gave was horrible. Today I received this via email:
RE: Credit for the cancel reservation
Dear Barbara,
We have received your fax. We are in the process of assigning your issue to the appropriate representative.
The assigned representative will be in contact with you to further investigate your situation and may contact you by e-mail, telephone or mail to advise you of the status within 3 to 4 weeks. In most cases, you can expect a resolution of your issue within this time frame.
Should you have additional information or documentation to submit, please send it to this e-mail address or you may also submit the information to the address provided below.
We appreciate your business and the opportunity to address your concerns.
Sincerely,
Shirley P.
Travelocity Consumer Relations
Note to self…it takes 1 week for Travelocity’s consumer relations to respond to their customers so they must be VERY busy!
Advertising on StumbleUpon
Advertising on StumbleUpon is quick, simple and an inexpensive way to get your site in front of thousands of people that share a common interest.
When you begin building your Stumble campaign the landing page is very simple to navigate through.
You enter the url you want to advertise, then select the group you want to target, and your daily page views (100-3000) limit to stay within your daily budget. StumbleUpon also offers you an advanced option where you can geo-target and select gender and age. In case you can’t read the image above, the number in parenthesis next to the group is how many thousand users are subscribed to that particular group.
Once you input your information you submit your ad and wait for approval.
A few things worth noting are that the same url will not be displayed to the same Stumbler twice within the run of the campaign. You may run multiple campaigns at once with different urls, but each one will have to be submitted for the approval process (usually 24 hours). You may also target multiple groups, but once again SU asks you to submit each request separately.
If you are considering advertising on StumbleUpon for the holidays bear in mind that the sooner you do it, the better and here’s why.
StumbleUpon approves all their ads manually which is time consuming. During the holidays when staff is off vacationing your ad approval could be delayed if you procrastinate.
If you need your ad approved and displayed during this holiday season StumbleUpon suggests you submit it no later than 12/17/07.
StumbleUpon continues to prove to be a cost-effective way to drive targeted traffic to your website. If your landing page is interesting enough, odds are it will continue to get rated and thumbed up meaning that you could potentially double or triple the amount of traffic you paid for. In addition, Stumbler’s reviews can be a good indicator as to what works well and what might suck about your site or product. It’s kind of like getting input from a small focus group together as an added bonus.
To advertise on StumbleUpon go here.
Pubcon 2007
Back from Pubcon and we had a fantastic time as always. The show wasn’t as big as I remembered from last year and the people that went to SES Chicago were missed…even though some of them made an appearance at both…(Frank and Danny).
The majority of the conference attendees stayed at the Wynn and you could count on finding someone from the conference hanging out and networking downstairs at the bar or at the poker tables in the poker room at any given time.
Monday 12/3/2007
Whether you are a rockstar or not, you always feel like one when arriving at the Wynn, Las Vegas. By far this is one of my favorite hotels in Vegas and the rooms are absolutely perfect and gorgeous. We got in at about 6:30pm and had time to meet Dax and Cesar downstairs for a quick drink before we headed off to the Foundation Room at Mandalay Bay. We met some of our real estate agents Glenn of (Naples Real Estate, Larry of Denver Real Estate, Matt and Max) there for a very fancy shmancy dinner.
The Foundation Room has a dress code, but if you are wearing this particular t-shirt, they will let you in without any problem. (Especially if you agree to fondle their statues after dinner.)
(Matt Pellerin of Scottsdale Real Estate was introduced to Vodka martinis later that evening-big mistake)
With agents this fun, who wouldn’t want to launch a real estate web hosting platform? 