The Travelocity Crisis

Here follows a thorough description of my problem with Travelocity, which as of this writing remains unresolved.

As documented by an email received from Travelocity on August 30, the company sold me the following tickets:

United 203 from MCI to ORD on January 6, 2020 seat 25A
Air India 126 from ORD to DEL on January 6 - 7 seat 52A
Air India 191 from DEL to BOM to EWR on January 16 - 17 seat 52A
United 2075 from EWR to ORD to MCI on January 17 no seat specified

According to the email, the price was:
Flight $750
Taxes and fees: $789.73
Travelocity Booking Fee: $7.50
Flight Protection Plan: $100
for a total of $1647.23

On August 30, my bank (Bank of Labor) paid $1539.73 (the combined flight, taxes and fees), $7.50 and $100 in three separate transactions. Funds were deducted from my account accordingly. Transactions have been re-verified via a phone call with my bank on December 17.

On September 13 and 14 and October 18 I received text messages from Travelocity indicating that changes had been made to the United flights. The message on Sept. 13 referenced flight 203, and the other two messages referenced flight 2075.

All three messages said “Please check your email for the full details.” Travelocity sent no emails accompanying these messages. Absence of emails verified via inspection of inbox,  junk and deleted items folders in my Hotmail account.

The messages concluded “It is not necessary to call to reconfirm your flight.”

Despite Travelocity’s assurance that there was no need to reconfirm my flights, I checked my itinerary online on these occasions and found nothing apparently amiss.

On December 16 I began the process of preparing a comprehensive itinerary of my trip including information from Travelocity and other companies. When I re-checked my online itinerary for flight numbers and times, I found that the United flights had disappeared from the list. The Air India flights were still present.

I contacted Travelocity customer support via Facebook message. After delays, Travelocity’s representative informed me that United cancelled my flight due to a “major schedule change.”

No such change exists. According to United’s web site, both flights are currently available (verified on Dec. 18) at nearly identical scheduled departure and arrival times.

Travelocity’s representative indicated that United would contact me directly by phone within 24 hours. United did not call me.

Later in the evening I received an email from Travelocity indicating that the airline “had not acknowledged the flight and/or fare” and thus the reservation could not be ticketed.

The next day (Dec. 17) I received an email from Travelocity indicating that my entire itinerary had been cancelled. The email falsely stated that the company made multiple attempts to contact me and received no response.

I called Travelocity. Its representative said the itinerary had been cancelled and offered me a $200 refund (a sum greater than the amount initially paid to Travelocity for expenses other than the tickets, taxes and fees but of course far less than the total paid for the trip).

Declining the offer, I suspended further action in the matter until I had the chance to cool down a little.

After breakfast on December 18, I recontacted Travelocity via Facebook message. I explained the situation. After a wait of more than an hour, the representative asked for my phone number so they could call me. He (or she or it) offered no explanation for why the matter couldn’t be resolved via message.

During the subsequent phone call, I was informed that Air India had “never confirmed the reservation” and that therefore no tickets existed. Although I had long since given up on the idea that Travelocity would honor its obligation to provide me with the United tickets, I still held out hope that Air India might be saved. Apparently not.

Travelocity’s representative assured me that I will receive refunds for all the money I paid, though it will take three to five business days to get it done. Which of course means that it’s highly unlikely to happen before Christmas. She also told me to contact my bank and dispute the charge, which of course makes no sense if it’s simply going to be refunded.

As a matter of due diligence, I contacted the bank. Of course the charge is now far too old to dispute (not that it should have needed disputing in any event).

As things stand now (December 18 at noon), I have no tickets. Because I need to re-book my flights (directly with the airlines this time, fool me once shame on you …) as quickly as possible, I’ve been reduced to asking my mother to lend me the money for the tickets. In addition to the embarrassment of dragging Mom into it, there’s the additional problem that she will probably refuse to let me pay her back.

I now regret ever having attempted this trip, and if I hadn’t already sunk so much money, time and effort into it I’d probably cancel the whole thing.