Complaint Review: Travelocity - Southlake Texas

On the Travelocity.com website, you will find the following:

"Customer Bill of Rights: In other words...
We here at Travelocity believe that you deserve great travel experiences. That's why we created our own Travelocity Customer Bill of Rights and realigned our entire organization so that our products, policies and employees protect them. It's on the foundation of this work, strengthened by our commitment to continually get better at what we do, that we offer the Travelocity Guarantee.

The Travelocity Guarantee is our seal on your traveler rights, a promise to our customers that we'll do our utmost to take care of you - that when you book with Travelocity, 'you'll never roam alone.' This promise extends to your entire trip experience..."

Specifically, right #6 states: "You have the right to speak with someone and get help anytime.

Call one of our knowledgeable representatives for help anytime at 888-872-8356 or 210-521-5871 (for international callers). We're here to help you 24/7."

Hardly.

I had some account credit that I wanted to use to rebook a ticket. With Travelocity, you cannot use account credit to book a ticket on-line - you must call them to do this.

I called Travelocity in morning to book the ticket and waited on hold for 30 minutes before I had to hang up.

I called a second time at 10pm EST and was placed on hold for one hour. I spent another 20 minutes getting the ticket booked, only to be disconnected as I was relaying my payment information.

I called back and was immediately connected to a customer service rep who I spent 10 minutes talking to me about my reservation before he realized that I was trying to use my account credit towards the ticket. He then said he couldn't help me and blamed the me for not being more clear about the credit I wanted to use, even though I had already explained it to him. He transferred me to another department. I explained I had already been on hold for a long time, on a previous call and he said in a nasty tone "Oh, I don't know how long you'll have to wait - probably five minutes."

I was on hold for one hour and15 minutes before someone picked up the phone. I asked to speak with a manager. I was told (at 5 different points) that it would be a 3-5 minute wait for the manager. I was on hold for another hour.

I was finally connected to the manager ("Chris" in India who completely understood how I felt at this point). While I had been on hold - the ticket price had gone up. While Chris was willing to waive the Travelocity rebooking fee of $30 per ticket, he was not willing to cover the difference of the new ticket price.

Furthermore, I was told by the first rep that the travel protection I had purchased for the first ticket (which for technical reasons did not cover my family emergency) would transfer to the second ticket. I verified this with him three times. Chris confirmed that this was not true - and that I would have to call Travel Guard to purchase new protection.

I finally hung up at 1:15 am.

While I was on hold, I emailed Travelocity customer service.
This is the response I received:

"We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience you experienced when contacting our Customer Care Center. We are currently experiencing higher than normal call volumes. At this time, we recommend calling again outside normal business hours."

Everyone kept saying "but we have higher than normal call volumes". As I see it, there are three possible solutions to this problem:
1. Hire more people to answer the phone. There is no shortage of willing workers in India, or 2. upgrade your phone system so that callers will know how long the expected wait time is. 3. Allow customers to use their account to
rebook a ticket on-line. This would have saved hours and lots of frustration.

I will think twice before using Travelocity again.