Why you should never use Orbitz

When the self-checkin kiosk didn't work, I was a little concerned. When the woman who came over to help frowned and referred me to the medallion club member desk, I knew it was bad.

It turns out I was the victim of a "schedule change", which is a polite euphemism for "we don't fly to Atlantic City anymore". I am not pleased with Delta over this, but what makes me furious is that when Delta contacted Orbitz about this on March 22 (5 weeks ago), Orbitz dropped this information on the floor. As I was standing at the counter being told that no flight existed, I pulled up Orbitz and it still displayed my reservation with no alerts. Being the type of gullible fool who believes things like "Orbitz TLC", I called them to resolve the situation, and basically spent an hour on the phone to end up with the same flight to Philadelphia that they had offered me at the counter. This was only after a struggle to convince them that Philly is much closer to Atlantic City than Newark despite the fact that you cross a state line.

Orbitz of course claims Delta is somehow at fault, but even if that is so, all Orbitz does is add a layer of incompetence between you and the airline. You also get to pay a service fee for that privilege. They have offered me a travel voucher for my trouble, but after talking with Delta I am convinced I could have gotten as much or more from them. Regardless, there is no dollar amount that can make up for the fact that all of my best friends are arriving in Atlantic City for my bachelor party and I'm still a long layover, a connecting flight, and a long drive away. From now on, I'll be booking my flights directly with the airline.

Comments

[Adam]

I had an issue related to that. I purchased a ticket to Sao Paulo from Atlanta on Aeromexico with a stopover in Mexico City. It was last year when we started the funky daylight saving time and it was during those two weeks when the US and Mexico had different DST schedules. Delta changed their schedule without letting me know and I arrived at Mexico City at 6:15 AM and my flight to Atlanta got rescheduled for an hour earlier causing me to miss it! I was trapped at that airport for about eight hours waiting for the next flight.

[rick]

The internet has a lot of virtues, but don't take info gathered there to the bank

[rick]

The internet has a lot of virtues, but don't take info gathered there to the bank