Gail writes that when things went awry with her hotel and car package reservation on Travelocity, regular customer service wasn’t able to resolve the error. Representatives told her to give up and reserve them separately, or to leave Travelocity staff alone and use another service. As a Consumerist reader and loyal Travelocity customer, she knew that she deserved better. She found an e-mail for the company’s VP of Sales and Customer Care, which didn’t get her the package deal she wanted–she got her hotel stay for free instead..

I’ve been using Travelocity almost exclusively for many years, and have generally had pretty positive experiences. But I recently ran into a problem, tried conventional methods to force a resolution, and finally succeeded with an Executive E-mail Carpet Bomb.

In trying to book a hotel + car package on their site, I got a good price (approximately a 30% discount over reserving the hotel and car separately) but kept getting an error message when I tried to finalize the reservation. The representative at their toll-free number and I went around and around, with her insisting that I reserve them separately and me replying that I would much prefer the package price, thank you very much.

Emails back and forth with their Customer Care department transmitted the requested information about how I encountered the glitch, but still provided no help in reserving the hotel and car I wanted. An email to their VP of Sales and Customer Care got some action, though. It took some persistence and a slightly goading response from me, but I eventually received a phone call from someone at Travelocity who made the reservations for me and they even picked up the tab (around $200) for the hotel!

I shudder to think about the repercussions that are cascading through the Customer Care department, and I especially would not want to be the representative who suggested I use a different travel website and stop bothering them. But the moral of the story is: Don’t put up with bad service. Keep escalating the issue until you find someone who really cares about customer service and has the authority to do something about it.

Need to get past the powerless customer service drones? Learn how to craft and launch an Executive Email Carpet Bomb of your own.

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