Killing me Softly?

July 20, 2008 by kevingalls.

Apparently this happens to everybody, but just to reiterate:

Three days ago I find a flight on Orbitz. Enter my info, billing card, etc. After submitting, a window appears, basically saying that flight is not available. Okay, back to the search. Found a different itinerary to purchase. Entered my info again (didn’t want to open an Orbitz account.) Same error window. In frustration, I closed Orbitz, expecting to try again later when the website was less bitchy.

Alas, I checked my bank account later that night and found that two round-trip flights’ fares were pending transactions, [edit: completed transactionns] not available from my bank account. This left me with only $120 in my account, not enough to get a flight from any company. Okay now, time to start complaining to Orbitz. Come to find, they have no record of my email address or telephone number I used for the transactions. I send an email to the customer service, as everybody else on this website has. They inform me they have no record of my transaction and need more info. I send more info and a screenshot of my bank statement showing the deductions. Now they are not answering my emails and my pending transactions are no longer pending, they have been deducted. So here I am, one day before my planned vacation and still without use of $840 that until Thursday was in my bank account.  As a student, I cannot afford my trip with a measely $120 so I can forget about seeing my family this summer.

Now I am a reasonable person. I don’t blame Orbitz if the flight turned out to not exist even though it is their website. However, it is their responsibility to confirm the availability BEFORE making any kind of contact with my bank. I am not a law student, but there is something very questionable about a company that makes any kind of transaction with my bank without first providing me any goods or services. I suspect they put the soft charge on my account and then get some feedback from the airline before completing the transaction. If this is the case, Orbitz must either confirm the flight reservations BEFORE putting charges on my account, or immediately contact my bank to free up those funds. At the VERY least, Orbitz should have informed me that the flight was not available, but they had placed a $420 hold on my account, and would apply that to another flight if I could find one. Instead, they said nothing of the hold and put a 2nd additional hold, keeping me from affording any flight at all. This is just bad business and unless I get a positive response by tonight, I will need to call my lawyer.

Thanks for creating this website for me to vent and hopefully prevent others from getting trapped.

[edit: After calling Orbitches several more times, they were able to locate my “account” and agreed that they owe me a refund, but only for Orbitz’s charge (about $12). They said the $820 refund for the plane tickets was between me and the airline. After calling the airline, they too agreed I would be refunded, but of course it would take 4 business days. In the end, I got every dollar back but since it took over a week, I didn’t have enough funds to book my trip until after my vacation time from work was over. So no trip for me, thanks Orbitches.]

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