- Uncategorized (44)
- July 15, 2010: Orbitz (Is that Philippino for bad customer service?)
- July 13, 2010: Travelocity better than Orbitz ...
- June 21, 2010: Don't use chat
- June 1, 2010: No way home
- April 26, 2010: I Used to work in orbitz
- April 14, 2010: Screwed by Orbitz
- April 13, 2010: Used Orbitz for booking at Barcelo Mismaloya in Puerto Vallarta
- March 22, 2010: Orbitz changed the rebooking deadline last minute
- February 21, 2010: REGARDING YOUR CLAIMS
- February 19, 2010: ORBITZ RUINED OUR 1 NIGHT in PARIS!
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Please Cancel Transactions That Fail
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.
August 9, 2009 at 11:43 pm
I work for orbitz. Please if you get an error message saying sorry we cannot process your card. Dont continue to click purchase just STOP and call your bank and see what is going on with your card. It is probaly something simple like a daily spending limit to protect agaist fraud.
1.Ask them if any charges went through. If any charges went through then ask them for how much. It is probably for half the booking or for how ever much your daily spending limit it. The system sends over the cost of the air portion firs then the hotel portion. For example if your daily spending limit is 2000.00 and the flight portion was 1500.00 and the hotel portion was 800. then all that will post as a pending charge will be 1500 witch is less than what your spending limit allows. and then the other portion will automatically be declined. Most people just keep on hitting purchase and gets all these pending charges. If you catch it early then it is a piece of cake for the credit card company to reverse. Just don’t be stupid and keep hitting purchase.
August 10, 2009 at 9:00 am
Listen “peach.” You’re probably a troll, but I’m bored, so I’m going to respond to your comment on my original message.
I doubt you’re even an Orbitz employee. Where’s your proof? Your employee number, contact information, or other collaterals? I see you didn’t provide any.
As for my original message, I tried once, and got a generic error on the website that said “transaction failed.” To me, that means what it said, “failed.” So I tried again, and received the same message. For all I know from the bad error message, there is a problem with your website, not my credit card. So I called the 800 number that was provided, and an ORBITZ EMPLOYEE directed me to try again via the phone. So maybe YOUR employees should understand how their own system works, and not direct customers to try again.
The real issue here is your “soft charges.” Your company tried to book an ENTIRE PACKAGE. If the ENTIRE PACKAGE cannot be book, the ENTIRE CHARGES should be cancelled, not just the part that was over the limit. It should not take 3-5 days to cancel charges for a transaction that failed. And for your information, I opened a three-way conference call with myself, my bank, and Orbitz, and YOUR company still refused to take the necessary actions to cancel the charges.
December 10, 2009 at 8:59 am
Please e-mail me if any of you guys file a class action suit. I have a similar problem. I am so frustrated i cant talk about the details because its very depressing and annoying.