January 30, 2009 by aarons44.

I tried to book a vacation last night for $3200. Failed three times - twice online and once by phone. Turns out that my debit card has a $2500 daily limit. So I called my bank and requested an increase. Tried again with Orbitz, and again in failed. Tried again, and again it failed. I logged into my bank account online, and I see that my available balance is about $2200 less than my actual balance. My bank was already closed, so I waited to call them this morning. Just found out that the $2200 are transactions pending from Orbitz! Apparently, even though they failed to debit my account for the full amount, they left the transactions pending. No wonder increasing the amount didn’t help. I was going to call Orbitz to see when they will be cancelling the transaction, but after reading this site, I might just call my bank back and see if they can do it.

Update: After talking to Orbitz, it appears that it was a “ghost booking”. It happens so much, they have a term for it. Basically, they charge part of the fee, even though the booking was unsuccesful. They were very responsive on the phone, promising me that the booking did not actually happen, and that the funds would be freed up. IN 3-10 BUSINESS DAYS! Who can afford to have an extra $2000 tied up that long? Not me. They told me to contact my bank, but my bank can’t do anything without Orbitz faxing them an authorization. Don’t think that will happen. Time to call my Congressmen and let them know how I feel about this. It’s probably not illegal, but it should be.

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January 30, 2009 by redman84.

Last year, my girlfriend and I decided to take a week vacation to Charleston, South Carolina. Instead of choosing to drive, we decided lets just fly, stay downtown and walk everywhere we need to go. However, our plans did not come through as we initially planned. We booked our air travel on US Airways through Orbitz. About a week after booking air travel, every hotel that was within our price range on the peninsula in downtown walking distances was booked solid and we were forced to make the decision to stay over in Mount Pleasant. We decided at this time, rather than pay for a rental car all week, we would cancel our trip on Orbitz and drive the six hours to Charleston. Upon our cancellation, we were made aware that we were given one year to re-use our Orbitz credit of $513.00 with a $100 US Airways re-booking fee and the $30 Orbitz fee. Not seen as a major issue at the time, so we did not make any issue with this.

Now, almost one year later and a deadline for travel to be completed by February 16th, we decided to make a quick 2 night get away back to Charleston and use a rental car service for two days. After researching hotels, car prices, and finally choosing flights on US Airways that would fit best into our schedule, I called Orbitz to rebook the trip. And this is where it went downhill…quickly. I told the customer service rep that I had found some flights on the Orbitz website that were ideal for our travel. She asked me what the departure times were….I told her…and then this is where it gets to be a serious issue. As follows:

What I found was a departure from RDU to CLT at 7am, change planes, then CLT to CHS arrive at 10am. Return flight, CHS to CLT at 3pm then, CLT to RDU arrive appx 5:30. This particular trip for two would cost, according to Orbitz for two passengers, $399.98. I told the customer service rep of this and she told me that it was no longer available, that she would have to pick the flights for me from US Airways back-end server. Instead, this lady had flying from RDU to PHL at 7am then PHL to CHS arriving at 11:30 and on return CHS to PHL at 12pm, then PHL to RDU, arriving at 5pm. I wasn’t at all thrilled by this, actually very upset that I could not connect out of an airport within a 30 minute flight from home, and instead having to fly completely out of my way to get to and from my destination. But here is where it gets worse and I will make this as clear to understand as possible:

This is what Orbitz offered me as the best option

Initial cost of Travel: $513.00 (credit to account)

US Airways rebook fee: $100.00 per ticket ($200.00)

Orbitz rebook fee: $30.00 per ticket ($60.00)

Cost of new travel arrangements:$393.90 per ticket… ($787.80 for 2)

Total: $534.80 to owe Orbitz in order to travel.

Grand Total w/ existing credit:  $1047.80

That is completely outrageous and by no means fair. They are asking me to pay them more than the initial trip cost was to complete my travel. Worst of all, I have basically 2 weeks to figure out what in the world I am supposed to do. An overall charge of over a thousand dollars for 1 round trip, for two people, and the longest flight of all four is about 40 minutes is completely insane, unfair, and absolute extremely poor business practice. For them to dictate what a paying customer can and cannot do and not even allowing them to chose the least expensive option is just down right piss poor. Now we’re either out of $524.79 which I still don’t understand why that is not our credit and they’re only giving us $513, or I’m forced to pay another $500+ dollars to travel. Its a no win situation and extremely frustrating and rather quite disturbing. I will never use their service again after this.

If anyone has any suggestions on any actions I can take please, let me know. I just really hate to lose my money and better yet, throw more complete unnecessary money down the drain.

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