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<< Previous   of   Next >>   ADVERTISEMENT   CONTACT THE HERALD Melanie Munk, Features Editor munk@heraldnet.com   Published: Saturday, November 29, 2008 Travelocity changes prices, drags its feet on refunding overcharges By Christopher Elliott Tribune Media Services I'm having a problem with a long-overdue refund for an online booking. I don't know what to do. I recently bought three airline tickets from Miami to Johannesburg, South Africa, through Travelocity. The trouble started soon after I made my purchase. A Travelocity representative phoned me to say that the price of my ticket had gone up overnight, and that he needed my permission to charge more on my credit card. Later that day I received another call from Travelocity. My credit card was invalid, the representative said. Did I have another card I could use? After this phone call, I checked to be sure the charges on my first card were canceled. They weren't. The charges added up to more than $12,000. I tried to cancel the charges on my first card, but was told only Travelocity could do that. I tried to cancel the charges on the second one, and got the same answer. I now had a total of nine transactions authorized and pending. I was getting heart palpitations. It's been several months, and I've literally lost days of work trying to resolve this. So far, Travelocity has removed some of the charges, but not all of them. The problem is that Travelocity believes the airlines made some errors, and as a result, there are three charges of $1,414 each plus service fees of $33. Please help. -- Susan Milette, Fort Pierce, Fla. Travelocity should have charged your card once. Any other billings should have been refunded immediately. I'm troubled by what happened to you. First, because your online travel agent contacted you to say the price had changed. That shouldn't have happened. Travelocity's service guarantee promises that everything about your booking will be right, and the company has gotten a lot of mileage from a story about how it honored airfares that were obviously wrong. A few years ago, Travelocity posted an erroneous zero-fare for tickets to Fiji. Instead of canceling them, it confirmed the tickets at a cost of about $2 million. Anyone who hears this often-repeated story or reads Travelocity's "guarantee" (leisure.travelocity.com/Promotions/0,,TRAVELOCITY|4818|mkt_main,00.html) would probably be led to believe that when Travelocity quotes a fare, it will honor the price. That didn't happen for you. I'm also concerned with the pace of your refunds. Travelocity blamed the delays on the airlines, by your account. In order to process your refund, your online agency had to figure out who should have billed you and who shouldn't have. That line of reasoning makes perfect sense if you're Travelocity. A business shouldn't be forced to refund money that it doesn't have. But it makes no sense from a customer's perspective. One reason you work with an online agent is to prevent something like this from happening in the first place. You've paid Travelocity a booking fee because there's a value in the service it offers. And part of that service is that it's an intermediary -- and if necessary, an advocate -- for you. What happens behind the scenes is not your worry. You're dealing directly with the online agency, and it's responsible for ensuring your card has been charged the correct amount. If you ever run into trouble with Travelocity again, consider appealing this to a manager. (I list a few of them on my Web site www.elliott.org/help/travelocity). The company's executives are remarkably responsive, and can override a questionable decision made by an employee. I wouldn't have allowed the company to charge a higher fare, and certainly wouldn't have tolerated the months of excuses and foot-dragging. I contacted Travelocity on your behalf and it promptly refunded the three remaining charges. Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine. E-mail him at celliott@ngs.org, or troubleshoot your trip through his Web site, www.elliott.org. READER COMMENTS Be the first to comment. You must be a registered user and verify your e-mail address to post comments to blogs or articles on HeraldNet. To register, click here. To read other terms and conditions, click here. Log out

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