When Marko Grdesic tries to make a change to his itinerary, a Travelocity representative tells him it will cost another $300. It doesn't. The online agency bills him $4,000, and despite promises to refund the money, it won't. What now?
Q: I'm writing to you because of a really difficult situation that I have with Travelocity.
My girlfriend and I had a set of multi-destination tickets that we booked through the site. We called Travelocity to ask if we could change one of our flights from Chicago to Washington. An agent told me it would cost another $300. She was nice but her English was not all that great. I got a confirmation email, but without any numbers.
Instead of charging me $300, Travelocity billed me another $4,000. They re-issued all the flights again, including the transatlantic flight.
I've been on the phone with their agents for the past month or more, trying to get this fixed. Eventually, they told me that if I cancel the remaining flights I would get a refund, which I agreed to. The refund was to appear on my credit card in one to two billing cycles. I re-arranged my travel plans and bought the tickets I needed elsewhere.
However, I then received an e-mail that said Travelocity is "unable to refund" the money. I called to see what was happening, and several agents and supervisors said that the refund is no longer possible but that I can get credit for future purchases, provided that flights take place within a year. Do you have any advice? -- Marko Grdesic, Madison, Wis.
A: Next time, don't change your flights. Oh, who am I kidding? Plans change, and Travelocity should have been able to handle this request without sucking another $4,000 from your bank account.
Your story is a cautionary tale about offshore phone agents and the needless complexity of airline reservation systems. It helps to look at this from the perspective of an online travel agency and an airline.
A big online travel agency wants to save money, so it hires inexpensive agents for whom English isn't a first language. It figures the cost savings will be more than the added expense of reservations that get screwed up because of language issues.
An airline, on the other hand, wants a sure thing. It wants cheeks in seats, or, more precisely, it wants the money from those tickets. Once you commit to a fare, it's in the carrier's best interest to make it difficult to change. So it hits you with fees for making changes and it almost certainly gave Travelocity a hard time when it tried to make a single tweak to your multi-itinerary trip.
These two forces are conspiring to create your $4,000 headache.
How could you have prevented this? First, you should have stayed off the phone as much as possible. Some flight changes can be made online -- it's not clear if yours was one of them -- but I would have tried that before phoning Travelocity. When you were connected with an agent who you couldn't understand, you could have asked for another representative or simply ended the call (politely) and called back until you got through to someone who could speak your language.
As for the refund, the phone is the least efficient way to inquire about that. Put your request in writing. Send an email. Your case will get a tracking number and Travelocity will be able to refer to it whenever you inquire about the money.
I asked Travelocity to have another look at your case. It promised to investigate, but five months later, you still hadn't received your money. So I asked the company again, and this time, it issued a full refund.
Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine and the host of "What You Get For The Money: Vacations" on the Fine Living Network. E-mail him at celliott@ngs.org.
(c) 2010 Christopher Elliott. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.
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