I have never used my blog to rant against someone, but today’s the day. I’m that angry.
I just had the worst customer service experience in my life. I booked the Casa Sant’Andrea Hotel in Venice, Italy with Orbitz, using a $50 off coupon code. Everything went fine until I received the confirmation email, which said the hotel was in Rome! I immediately canceled the reservation online. When I went back to the site to find the correct hotel in Venice, it gave me the same hotel, and the map showed Venice, not Rome as well. Turns out the hotel I booked was in Venice, even though the confirmation email from Orbitz said “Roma”.
Okay, time to rebook and let Customer Service know what happened. I deserve my coupon back, right? I canceled because of a mistake on their end, an at best misleading email that said the hotel was in Rome. I called their toll free number. Long story short, in 30 frustrating minutes I was transfered 4 times, each time someone telling me something different. Back and forth between Customer Service, who was supposed to re-instate the one-time use coupon code because of the error, then back to Booking who said the code wasn’t valid. Yikes! To make things worst, the customer service reps where clearly out of India, so there were plenty of language problems during this fiasco.
It goes without saying I’ll never book with Orbitz again. When I told a few other world travelers about my experience, they nodded as they too had terrible service with Orbitz. Unfortunately, this hotel only books through Orbitz so I had to bite the bullet and rebook. Let’s hope when I get to Venice the hotel will be there and I’ll have a reservation.
Check out this link to learn more, from someone who is collecting horror stories like mine and organizing a boycott. Okay, that off my chest, time to think about art.
The 21st Century isn’t what they promised it would be, is it? I’ve had similar issues with other companies who used to be pretty good with customer service. Outsourcing customer support to countries with don’t have English as the native language is a real drawback.
I find that going to the corporate website and then finding the complaints department and asking for the e-mail address that will reach the Chief Executive generally makes me feel better – whether or not I actually use it to bypass the quality control section which obviously isn’t working!
BTW – if you want the name and address of a back-up hotel let me know.
Thanks, Katerine. I may take you up on that. When I get home July 5th, I need to check with the hotel I booked and see if they received my reservation.