Orbitz.com has been screwing me around for weeks now, and they need to reach some resolution.
Back in October, I purchased a ticket to London through Orbitz with the intention of visiting my fiance, who lives there (I live in New York), over Thanksgiving. Somewhere along the line, our plans changed, and we decided that he'd come to me instead, so I went on the Orbitz website to cancel the ticket. The website stated that I could cancel and use the credit, minus a certain fee, for another flight on the same airline, and that this credit would be good until October 2006. This seemed reasonable to me, so I went ahead and did it.
Fast forward to early February. I plan to visit my fiance for the two weeks of my spring break, so naturally I decided to use my Orbitz credit. I called and spoke to a very nice man, told him my travel dates and that I wanted to use this existing credit. He went to enter the information and discovered that there was some kind of problem (which he didn't specify) and that he was going to have to call the airline. I waited on hold while he did so, and then he got back on the line and told me that for some reason, the ticket had been closed, and that he was going to have to call someone else to get them to open it. He told me that once he had straightened it out, he would give me a call back. I got a message a few hours later that the ticket had been reopened and that everything should be fine to re-book.
I called Orbitz back the next day and spoke to a woman, explained what had happened the day before, and again told her my travel dates. She attempted to make the reservation and got another error. Once again, she put me on hold while she called the airline, and came back to tell me that apparently, the ticket I had purchased could not have its departure date changed, so since the flight had departed back in November, the ticket was expired. She went on to say that the website should not have let me cancel the ticket at all, but since it did, Orbitz was at fault and my case would have to be forwarded to Customer Service, who would work out my compensation and get back to me within 7-10 working days.
A week later, I hadn't heard anything, so I called to see what was going on. After sitting on hold forever, and explaining the situation in detail to two different people, all the second person had to offer me was, "I can see that your case has been sent to Customer Service, and they will always get back to you within 14 working days. You will hear from them by next Friday." It took a good 20-25 minutes on the phone to get to this point, by the way--it seems to me like the first person I spoke to could have told me that within the first 5 minutes and saved everyone some time. But whatever.
Today (now three working days after 'next Friday' and a good 21 days after my original call), I still haven't heard anything, so I call Orbitz again. The woman I spoke to looked at my file and said, "It looks like Customer Service hasn't opened this yet. Maybe they're really backed up." She told me that she can put in another request, and ask that it be expedited, but that's all. She can't call them herself, she can't transfer me, and there's no direct number I can call.
Sorry for the long post, but as you may be able to tell, I'm a little pissed off. Does anyone have any advice? I don't want to go off on the poor person in the call center, because it's not her fault, but I feel like this is really unacceptable behavior. Orbitz has close to 500 dollars of my money which they are denying me access to. I understand that airlines have regulations about tickets, but in that case I shouldn't have been permitted to cancel the ticket in the first place. My mother was nice enough to pay for my spring break ticket once it became clear that Orbitz was jerking me around, so there's no time crunch in terms of getting a new flight--at this point, I want a full refund for my trouble. I can see this becoming a legal matter if they don't do something soon.