Thursday, January 30, 2014

Warning to Travelocity Customers

Recently I went to my Travelocity account to check the details of reservations I had made for a trip to the east coast in a few weeks and was disturbed to be told by the web page that I had no future reservations. I called their help number, eventually got through the phone tree, and was told that the reservations existed but that because they were changing computer systems they did not show up when I did a search for them on the web page. I suggested to the agent that they ought to have a warning on the page used to search for reservations that the results were not at the moment reliable. She seemed uninterested. I asked her to connect me with her supervisor. She said she would do so—and sent me back to the beginning of the phone tree.

Since that was not working, I sent them an email pointing out that they were giving customers frightening false information by telling them that reservations they had made did not exist, and suggested that they add a warning to the web page. I got back a canned response that showed no evidence that anyone had read my email, along with a phone number—which, when I tried it, put me back at the beginning of their phone tree. I responded to that, got back a response apologizing for the difficulty due to the changing computer system and suggesting that I call an agent to get the information on my reservations. The same number. No evidence that anyone had actually read my email or that anything was going to be done about it.

Hence this post. Travelocity customers should be warned that, as of yesterday, the part of their computer system used to tell you what reservations you have does not work and may tell you that reservations you have do not exist. If that happens, you can get information on your reservation by calling their help number, navigating the phone tree, and eventually reaching an agent who can look up your reservation for you.

P.S. a few days later. I received another email, saying that "Your e-mail will be forwarded to our Product Development team for their review and consideration." So it's possible something will be done. Or not.

2 comments:

Fred Mangels said...

My travel experience is limited to driving from Eureka to San Francisco, but I found I actually could get a better deal just calling the hotel or motel itself and making reservations rather than using a travel site.

Again, limited experience, but the one time I tried a few travel sites (forget the names) I gave up and ended up reserving with the Days Inn directly. They gave me a price $10.00 under what the travel sites were quoting.

To be fair, we were staying at that place fairly often at the time. I just thought I'd try the travel sites to see if they'd save money or be more convenient. In my case, they did neither.

Gary McGath said...

In 2009, Travelocity and a few other travel websites handed user credit card information to an advertiser that then proceeded to engage in scam billing of people who simply requested information. I would never do business with Travelocity.