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My experience there... (Reply to this comment)
by jomomax
This is one man's crusade against "the sytem". Against what he cannot fight otherwise. This is a chance to fight with the pen and keyboard that which I have no other weapons to fight. (OK, a little dramatic oversell... but...)
It all started with an innocent booking on a Travelocity-owned site, lastminute.com (which, as I understand it, is supported in the back-end by World Choice Travel, "WCT")...
To make a long story short, it appears that WCT has a different cancellation policy than your destination travel partner (hotel, in this case) and is out to make a buck off cancellations.
I booked a hotel and cancelled it 24 hours prior to the time you are allowed to check-in to the hotel (3pm). This is "normal". In my extensive business travel, I know that I have until 24 hours prior to check-in to freely cancel my reservation. However, apparently, WCT's policy is 24 hours prior to the DAY of check-in, not the time of check-in -- therefore creating a gap of 15 hours.
When I called WCT and spoke with a supervisor ("BJ" was her name), she said that it was 'too bad', that I should read the fine print, etc. When I explained to her that this is simply not fair, she told me that since the hotel would be charging them the cancellation fee, they would have to charge me.
Fair enough!
I agree with that.
But it did not make sense to me that the hotel was going to charge them since this would be non-standard practice by the HOTEL!!!
I called the hotel directly and spoke with just about everyone (it is a national chain). The revenue department manager was the final stop on the chain and explained very calmly to me that they would NOT be charging WCT and that the cancellation was received in time. She even went so far as to check their agreement with WCT just to verify.
When I turned back to WCT, they immediately clammed up and sent their "Execuitve resolution coordinator" on me. It was a simple one-paragraph response:
'My name is Posie Brown I work for Travelocity's Executive Offices. We received
an email in reference to your cancelled WCT reservation. Unfortunately we unable
to honor your request due to the cancellation policy agreed to at the time of
booking.
Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience.'
And that's the end of that. No more responses. No more comment. No chance to appeal.
So, to summarize the scam as I see it:
Travelocity's cancellation policy is different than hotels
Travelocity takes advantage of that difference
Travelers expecting 'regular' practice regarding cancellations can be 'duped' into a mistake
Travelocity makes ALL the money on that gap between policies and ultimately on customers.
To me, in the best case this is bad business practice. In the worst case, it is just plain dishonest. What can I do about it? Well, for starters, I can guarantee you that they will NEVER receive my business again. Taking them to court is pretty outlandish. It is a small enough amount of money that I cannot imagine how that would work for me. SO, instead, I will use the Internet to will make it my MISSION to see that the general population of travelers know of this bad practice and I encourage you to:
1. Boycott Travelocity and this practice
2. Write to my friend Posie Brown and let her know about this (Posie.Brown@travelocity.com)
Very disturbing. But must take action.
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Jul 20 '07
6:23 am PDT
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Hi (Reply to this comment)
by elzora
Nice job on this review. My daughter just had a heck of a time with them, they charged her twice for the same trip. I had to get involved and we finally got it resolved, but it was a big hassle.
Sue
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Jun 01 '07
8:17 am PDT
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