this is the email i sent to expedia today.  i don't know how i managed to NOT put them on hold in order to track down their customer service department so i could physically show up there with ninja stars and a fire axe.  and don't you hate when you call customer service and the robot asks you to input your hundred digit account number and then when you speak to an operator they AGAIN ask for your hundred digit account number?  why the fuck do they do this?  why the fuck are you asking me again when i just told mr. roboto what it was??? 

I want to officially file a complaint against your package specialist department.  This is in regards to Case # 4268xxxx.

Yesterday I placed a call to Expedia to find out options on changing an existing itinerary to a different date.  The first person I spoke to told me I would be penalized $150/pp for changing the flight and asked me if I wanted to move forward with changing the dates.  I said I wanted to go ahead with the changes and he put me on hold.  After a while I noticed I wasn't on hold and I was disconnected.

I called back and got another customer service operator.  He told me there was no record of the call I just had and I had to explain what my issue was all over again.  He was not well-trained on the system and at one point placed me on hold for more than half an hour so he could find out how much the penalties would be.  Finally he came back on the line and told me the airfare penalty was $200/pp.  When I asked him why the other operator told me $150 he said verbatim "I guess he was bluffing!" and then laughed.  I told him I didn't find it funny and I thought it was unprofessional he was laughing about it. 

Every single time I had a question he had to place me on hold to ask someone else for 10-15 minutes at a time.  When I asked the second operator to go ahead and change the itinerary, he told me he wasn't able to get the same flight times and that the only thing he could find was one that departed at 7:30am and arrived in Montego Bay at 7:30pm.  At that point he began laughing and said I would be flying for 12 hours.  I became so frustrated that I told him to forget it and I would look up options at home.  When I hung up the phone, I was literally crying because of the frustration I had just experienced.

Other issues I had with him had to do with him reading me the wrong dates.  He would say one thing and then apologize and say he meant something else.  For example, he told me he was going to change the itinerary to leave on 5/29 and return on 6/2.  When I told him that I wanted to return on 6/3 and not 6/2 he said "oh sorry, that's what I meant to say...6/3". 

I placed my first call to Expedia at 4pm.  By the time I was done with this experience it was 6pm. 

This morning I called Expedia again and spoke to Melissa who was MUCH friendlier, professional and handled my problem in less than 5 minutes.  Not to mention the penalty was indeed $150/pp and NOT $200 as that person misquoted me.

I cannot believe this person is working in the CUSTOMER services department.  He was completely incompetent, condescending, unprofessional, and distasteful.  If it wasn't for my longstanding relationship with booking my vacation packages through Expedia I would have canceled my package and booked with another company.

 

i am going to send the travelocity gnome to give expedia a good thrashing.