I have been off and on hold with Expedia for the last 2+ hours because they failed to book a flight for our upcoming vacation. Their incompetence knows no bounds. Even their hold music sucks, and I’m not quite sure why I’m holding THIS time. Rather than give you 2 pages of gory details, I simply ask, what was your most horrible customer service experience?
We are contacting you in regards to your recent purchase made on Expedia.com.
Due to technical difficulties beyond our control we are currently unable to confirm your reservation.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused; however, it is important that you contact our offices at 1-877-247-0153 and reference case number x-xxxxxxxxx. Our agents are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
This is an unmonitored alias. Please do not respond to this e-mail. Please contact the number listed above for any further information.
Thank you for choosing Expedia.com.
ALWAYS use Expedia, or Orbitz to FIND a flight. NEVER use them to actually make the reservation. Go to the airline site and book through THEM at the same rate.
We booked a flight on Aer Lingus 2 years ago months in advance on Orbitz. I picked some great seats. Two weeks before the fight, I discovered that those seats were gone and we got stuck in the middle of a wide body steerage row.
Last year I found a flight on Air France, booked it FROM Air France itself and picked the best seats on the plane. There’s a third party site that shows the best seats on any given flight.
I wouldn’t have, but the carrot was a free extra night at the hotel. Not worth the $250 savings.
My easy answer: anything that ends with
.gov
or
.dmv (same,same, as they are contactors).
Expedia sucks it now .
In May I booked a hotel room in Denver over my cell phone . I was returning there from a hunting trip in Wyoming/Montana . I had driven 7 hours, it was late and I was pooped.
I went to the hotel and DAMN I thought I was on the South Side Of Chicago . Thank God I gun . The cast of thugs in the lobby was unnerving . They saw that I had a gun case which was good. The gun was next to that night.
I called Expedia and told them this was the worst place I’d ever stayed in my ENTIRE life ( crap I stayed in some seedy places as a college student but not this bad ). The told me that they’d look into the matter and they refunded the 30 bucks in Expedia rewards that I had used .
Expedia’s rating system eats Stuckey’s poop !
I worked for Sears for 14 months ( felt like years ) the IT department was run by 1980’s slackers who would get to it when they could. I actually had to learn crystal to be able to fix shit in my auto shop and in the main line store. They when I fixed shit I would be wrote up for improper access to the computer system.
I held the company record with 73 open tickets at the same time. 60 of them i fixed myself after 2 days with a 20 year old training manual i found online.
First of all don’t you know the world is collapsing and you’re going on vacation ? I never been on a vacation my entire life. Not once .Probably the reason I’ve never been outside of the US except my work related trips into Canada. Do you know House payments , car payments , insurance payments and then vacations are the main reasons must never accumulate any wealth ? Stay all home ,save your money. Show your wife who is boss.
I had Sprint once for my phone company. This was back in the 90’s when houses had land lines. A neighbor moved in across the street and the phone company hooked their phone up to my line. The neighbor had to call HI a lot for his job and I ended up with a large long distance bills out of the arrangement. Sprint would not agree that my neighbors phone was connected to my line. When the phone rang in, both houses would pick up so there were at least 3 people saying hello, hello, hello. It was funny at first, but as the situation dragged on and my long distance charges and late fees growing it became less and less funny. They eventually fixed the problem and removed the charges from my bill, but I don’t how many calls I made to them complaining only to have them tell me that someone in my house must be making all these long distance calls. That was somewhere in the late 90’s and to this day I will refuse to do business with Sprint.
What I hate the most is the ‘shadow’ company – they have no inventory, but claim everything is in stock. So you order and they order it from some other wholesaler who apparently doesn’t have it in stock – but they never tell you – they have your money. When nothing arrives you email, then you call. I never accept: “It will be about two weeks”
The other is the ‘road side assistance’ – my direct experience with Volvo, BMW, and insurance companies. All three suck. Call sometime at 1:00 Sunday afternoon – see if anyone will even answer the phone. Worthless. The next day you can complain, they will say: “Oh we have to look into that.” Scam.
AAA almost killed my dad. The clown that changed the tire overtightened the lug nuts. One by one they sheered off. He heard a funny noise, pulled over, and he was on his last one. Guess they don’t clear their garages.
There have been several bad customer service experiences but Comcast Cable is the one that pisses me off the most. I won’t go into it here because I’m pretty sure it is ubiquitous among Comcast customers. I’m getting closer to convincing the wife to give up cable so there is still hope!
I know most of us have experienced the joy of dealing with customer service out of India. I love that they always have names like Jeff or Susan and say “thank you very much for providing that information” EVERY FUCKING TIME you say something. I figured customer service couldn’t;t get much worse.
Lately though, based on two experiences, it seems like customer service *might* be coming back to ‘Murica but it’s not a good thing. I’m beginning to think that business owners looked around ‘Murica 25 years ago and deduced from the cratering education standards in ‘Murica that they were going to have to do something about it if they wanted to continue to provide customer service. The result was farming it out to India.
I think it happened just in the nick of time too because the last two US based customer service experiences I had left me wishing I was talking to Jeff in India!
The wife & I decided to take a weekend vacation so we headed up the 101 about 3 hours to Avila Beach. There’s a place there called Sycamore Springs we’ve been to a million times, and it’s unique because each room has a hot tub on the patio or balcony with hot mineral spring water, very soothing sulfur smell and kind of a laid-back hippie place.
So this Japanese company had purchased the place and purchased the land across the road to build new buildings and add rooms. They tried to make it more upscale, raising the rates, and I don’t think they really understood this place’s “vibe”.
Anyway, when we checked in the desk clerk told us we had been upgraded from their older rooms to a new one across the street. I asked if these rooms had mineral spring water. They said no, but the rooms are much nicer. So then I had to recite my history with their establishment going back to the mid 70’s, and the reason for my loyalty was, indeed, the mineral spring water. And I added, I imagine many of your guests come here for the same reason.
So, it was clear I wanted a room with mineral springs water, nothing else would suit.
By the time my voice had increased decibel level by a factor of 10 and caught the manager’s attention. He appeared and announced that they were fully booked up and there was nothing they could do.
So my retort was, “why don’t you give the “upgrade” to someone else and give me the room I reserved”?
The manager flushed (I thought he might faint), and said “And I’m an idiot”. Neither of the desk clerks, my wife, or I said a thing; crickets. We got the room we reserved.
We still laugh about it, and they’ve not pulled that shit on us since.
Anyway, sorry you’ve had your trip screwed up, Mike. I had a similar experience recently with Hotels.com and this was regarding a motel in San Francisco that tacked on a $25 parking fee that wasn’t clearly reflected on their website. Despite wasting an hour in phone calls to Hotels.com they refused to take any blame and gave me a “take it or leave it” attitude. I took it since we had nowhere else to stay, and it was near Fisherman’s Wharf. But I’ll NEVER book through Hotels.com again.
BTW most of these portals are owned by the same company. I think their parent is Priceline.
Westcoaster,
Nicely written, and is an excellent description of what customer service is (or should be) all about. Regards.
I hate Expedia. I used them once for some airline tickets, never again. I don’t know how they stay in business. Clever commercials?
But nobody beats .gov for bad customer service. Are you aware of the bomb they just dropped without warning on Social Security recipients?
– -SSA MANDATORY cell phone based multifactor authentication- –
“Starting in August 2016, Social Security is adding a new step to protect your privacy as a my Social Security user. This new requirement is the result of an executive order for federal agencies to provide more secure authentication for their online services. Any agency that provides online access to a customer’s personal information must use multifactor authentication.
When you sign in at ssa.gov/myaccount with your username and password, we will ask you to add your text-enabled cell phone number. The purpose of providing your cell phone number is that, each time you log in to your account with your username and password, we will send you a one-time security code you must also enter to log in successfully to your account.
Each time you sign into your account, you will complete two steps:
Step 1: Enter your username and password.
Step 2: Enter the security code we text to your cell phone (cell phone provider’s text message and data rates may apply).
The process of using a one-time security code in addition to a username and password is one form of “multifactor authentication,” which means we are using more than one method to make sure you are the actual owner of your account.
If you do not have a text-enabled cell phone or you do not wish to provide your cell phone number, you will not be able to access your my Social Security account. ”
— —
Surprising to no one except SS, many seniors don’t have a cell phone and many don’t text. Well they’re all fukt now.
And worse, much worse, their system only recognizes 10 digit US phone numbers. The internet is lit up with seniors who live abroad who now cannot access their social security accounts online. I saw one poster who had received a response referring him ‘to his nearest US embassy’.
Thought you were going to retire abroad American? Fuck you.
Discover Card did not honor their promise to refund any crooked charges; a crooked company in California triple billed me and I wanted my money back and the crooks put in prison. Discover said they would investigate. They took a couple weeks and then said that company said I had agreed and conveniently took their word over mine. Damn Stupid Crooked Discover Card, there are many other card companies; but I now pay cash whenever I can and never keep a card balance. Crooked Discover Card hurts the whole card business.