I booked a trip on Orbitz (the travel site I won't dignify with a link) last April 12th. We were going direct from Denver to Honolulu on 10/18, spend a few days on Waikiki beach and head over to Maui on Thursday 10/23 and finish our trip in Kaanapali at the Westin and then fly back direct to Denver on the red-eye. We've been going to Maui since '93 pretty much every year in October (or there abouts). After the flights were booked for about $950/ticket I went on the United website and upgraded our seats to First Class using miles...shortly there after we received our tickets from Orbitz...
-- Fast forward to September --
Since I took the Latin America job in mid-July, it's been non-stop travel...between Fort Lauderdale (2X) for house hunting, 1X for general business, a week in Washington DC for the National Sales meeting, a trip to BA and a turn-around trip back to Fort Lauderdale and then to squeeze in 2 weeks in the islands before we moved to Boca Raton was probably not the best choice. I would stress about work and that would make Lisa grumpy, which would make me feel bad, which would lead to more drinking...{you can see where this is going righ?} -- So we canceled our trip --
I contacted Orbitz and they canceled our reservation and instructed me to return the tickets...well one thing led to another and I never returned the tickets...I knew where they were, but didn't send them back...I called them again and wanted to book another trip using our $1,900 credit, I suggested I had returned them and they lost them, but that tack didn't work...I asked to talk to a supervisor, but that didn't help. Lisa was livid as she thought I had mis-handled the whole thing...never the less, we paid the $20 and returned them via UPS with the tracking number etc. There was also the stipulation that our travel needed to be completed by April 12th on United (not ticketed, travel completed within the year from when the tickets were purchased) -- fast forward to last weekend --
I called Orbitz wanting to use our credit to go to Colorado in February. Ticket prices have fallen dramatically and United was charging $240/ticket direct from Miami. Orbitiz's would book us the tickets but we would have been leaving $1,400 on the table...it had to be one trip of equal or more value. They did suggest, they would "mail us back the tickets" and we could take them to United, book a trip before April 12th and the remaining credit balance would roll-over for another year. Now the friggen burden is on me to negotiate with United and figure out where I might want to go --
Well we booked our Colorado trip on American for the same price as United, and the charge for Simba (our cat) is $150 cheaper, so $200 instead of $350.
I'm sorry but I will never use Orbitz again!!!
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