James booked two flights for his honeymoon with Travelocity, but when it became obvious that their visas weren’t going to come in on time, James asked Travelocity if he could reschedule. They assured him that he could, so James followed their instructions and FedExed his tickets back to Travelocity. He then waited for them to call to complete the transaction. They called 2 days after he was originally scheduled to leave and left a message saying that he could now reschedule. When he called them back, Travelocity said that they’d neglected to inform the airline that he was going to be rescheduling, so they’d been marked as “no shows” and were out of luck… and out of $2,584.55.

Travelocity stole $2,594.55 of my honeymoon money.

Travelocity is a giant warehouse for wholesale airline tickets who doesn’t care about its customers and is masquerading as a travel agency. They route calls to customer service call centers in foreign countries with agents with false names like “Simon” who regurgitate scripts with absolutely no quality control or back tracking ability. Details below.

I booked two flights, a honeymoon, through Travelocity on March 18th to Brazil for June 2nd at a total cost of $2,594.55. On May 27 it became clear our visas were not going to come through on time, and I called Travelocity and spoke to “Simon”. Simon assured me if I mailed my paper tickets and was willing to pay whatever cost difference the trip could be rescheduled within 14 days. I quickly Fed-Exed the tickets. On June 4th Travelocity called reporting that the tickets were received and I could now reschedule my trip. I was out of town and returned the call on June 12th. Despite the fact I notified Travelocity that I would not be using my tickets, Travelocity failed to notify the airlines I wasn’t going to be on the flights, and the airline credits were lost.

Travelocity is refusing to reschedule or refund my money, because the airlines are considering us “no shows”. I totally understand the airlines’ perspective, we were not there. However, why did travelocity neglect to inform the airlines of my desire to reschedule or “not show up”? Is that not the function of a travel agent? Do they honestly feel they can just take $2,594.55 of our savings and not provide ANY services to us? After spending 10 hours on the phone with Travelocity, their only answer to me was an email address: customer.relations@travelocity.com. They promised 48 hour response. I’ve sent two. I’ve gotten nothing back.

We live in an age were gigantic monolithic corporations are okay with losing customers because it doesn’t affect the bottom line due to the total size of their customer base. I am not okay with this. $2,594.55 isn’t much to Travelocity, but it’s a lot of money to my new wife and I! I’m asking for a full refund from Travelocity.

We’re going to assume that you paid for these tickets with a credit card, so we’re going to recommend that you get your credit card company involved in this dispute. Call them up and explain that due to an error on Travelocity’s part, you were denied the services you paid for. Tell them that you’d like to do a chargeback for the entire amount.

If this isn’t successful, you may have to file a small claims lawsuit or talk to a lawyer. Good luck.

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