Travelocity.com

If you are headed off to Germany to talk to Dr. Z about your vehicle problems, I don't recommend you book with Travelocity.  There's nothing good about working with this incompetent company and it's way offshore customer service center if they screw up your trip like they did mine.

From my experience, the three or four major Internet travel agencies have no customer service.  I've had relatively minor problems with the other 3 of the top 4 I've used.  Travelocity is second to none in horrible customer support and quality of services delivered.  The set the standard for how bad Internet travel agencies can be.  They make we want to go back to the others!  Here's a good reason why.  Found this on Google!

Government Pork for Travelocity - Click to read the article

Here's a basic question that should have a resounding NO for a response:  Have you ever heard of a travel agency that cannot generate an accurate itinerary?  You know..  That document that says when you are leaving, airports, etc?  Well, look no further than these idiots.  They can give you one that's missing flights or one that's got overlapping segments.  I even received an email itinerary that was 100% correct because the only thing on it was the word ITINERARY and it was correct because it was spelled correctly.  No flights.  No information.  Just the word "ITINERARY".

Through no fault of mine, they screwed up my itinerary.  When I called, I was transferred to the overseas call center.  Oh joy my friends.  They kept me on hold for hours and hours over a 4 day period.  They refused to call back saying they are an inbound center only!  They responded rudely by talking over me while I tried to explain the problem.  They didn't listen.  They didn't consider my problem a problem.  They told me their system wouldn't allow them to enter a correct itinerary.  At one point I thought I was on a prank call with one of the Jerky Boys.  They never responded to dozens of emails.  They generated multiple levels of bogus information and had computers call me with more bogus information.  They can't fix it even if you bear their horrible overseas VOIP connections and long hold times to an answer center in god knows what part of the world.  I'll guarantee it ain't in Travelocity's home state of Texas partner. 

The escalation is from the agent in the call center to the supervisor in the call center.   That's it for humans.  There is no talking to your manager.  The third level is to complain to the Consumer Affairs Department.  But these are not people you can actually talk to.  Read on.  It gets worse.

THEY HAVE NO PUBLISHED TELEPHONE NUMBER for their consumer affairs department that handles complaints.  They just have an email system that generates ID numbers.  Of course, they do not respond to email complaints. 

In the end, everything verbally told to me worked out.  But I'm not in the habit of sending my not so travel savvy wife and two small children on flights around the world on the word of somebody in a third world country that has absolutely no incentive to make sure the trip go flawlessly.  I want hard documentation.  Not too much to ask from a travel agency, right?

Yes my traveling friends this is how Travelocity works.  If you never have a problem with the service they provide, their process works.  If they break their process, they can't fix it.  The people that are in the call center are absolutely worthless at problem resolution and will be confrontational. 

They are the worst company on the planet in the travel business.  They will never see another dollar or Euro of my money.  They suck 100% of the 5 Lemons.  They are the Daimler-Chrysler of the Internet travel business based on my experience.

They loose.  I use their site to check schedules then I go directly to the airline and book my flight.  They provide NO value while charging a higher price.  I just booked another round trip to Europe.  This could have been their booking had they not screwed up.

I'm not done with flogging them.  I'm putting together a package of information to send to the CEO by FedEx. 

  Expedia.com

They get 3 lemons for posting inaccurate hotel information and passing the blame to the hotel.  It took hours of fighting on the phone with them to get something like a $25 credit!  Sure.  I'll login to my deleted account and use this valuable reward right now.  Well, maybe.  They don't suck as bad as Travelocity!  Sort of like voting.  All the candidates suck.  You are supposed to elect the one that sucks less.

  McDonalds

For hiring illegals that can operate a cash register, read the posted menus, and communicate with me sufficiently to place a small order attempted over a 5 minute period in the Palm Springs area.  I had to walk out and go someplace else after publicly showing my disgust.

I would give them 5 Lemons but they did respond personally (hand written, not some computer junk) to my complaint filed online.  They do read filed complaints and pass these down to regional offices quickly.  I'll have to stop in again to see if they've changed their hiring practices.

Got a book of coupons for my wasted time.  I'm not sure they would know what to do with one if I tried to use it.

  HostExcellence.com

Another company that outsources it's customer service and has horrible web and email service reliability.  Nice combination.  I couldn't take it after two weeks of attempting to work with them to resolve problems.  After a few fruitless days of this, I told them to "just fix the damn problem"..  That got a response to "not use the abusive lexic".  Ok.  We have a communications problem.  Time to move on down the internet highway to a new hosting company. 

It was no problem to a refund under a money back guarantee.  They have that process wired. That's worth a 1 lemon reduction.

  MySiteSpace.com

Email services for my sites were broken for a year and they couldn't resolve it.  Asked for a refund.  No response.  I should probably register another domain.  How about MySiteSpaceSucks.com and use the remaining months to host it there?