Replied off list to conserve bandwidth on SCA West.
Unfortunately I see this as endemic in the so called customer service field. As a professional in that line of work I have been outsourced three times by companies looking for higher profits using The Phillippines, India, or Costa Rica. I have worked for 1 company that insists on using only trchnical support customer service in the country the call initiates in unfortunately from my point of view they mad the iphone so user friendly they could cut the support staff and again I am unemployed. The lure of easy money is going to drive corporate greed in every field of endeavour. We as consumers can only refuse to use companies that outsource ANY part of their business. I personally will not willingly shop at Wal Mart because of the high percentage of made in other then US products. We as Americans have been taking the cheap road for so long and now we wonder why our economy is in the tank?
OK I will end my response to your rant.
Ottar
--- On Mon, 2/16/09, Ed <evbranscum@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Ed
Subject: [sca-west] OT - horrible customer service for travel arrangements.
To: sca-west@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, February 16, 2009, 2:05 AM
OK, I know it's late, I'm feeling particularly cranky, and you all
probably have much better better things to read, however with the up
coming travel which many will be making for either far flung events
within the West, or for inter-kingdom events I thought that I would
pass along a small rant I had regarding horrible customer service with
a particular travel booking company. What follows is the letter I
sent to the CEO of the company and have posted on more than a few
sites dedicated to spreading the word about their deceptive practices
and bad customer service.
This is a copy of a comment I left for the CEO of Orbitz:
Mr. Harford, CEO of Orbitz,
I have a serious problem with your company. I had previously
purchased a ticket for use in November of 2008, however was unable to
make my trip. I called your company who assured me that I would be
able to use the credit to purchase another ticket with the same
airline if I used it by September of 2009.
Two days ago on February, Friday 13, 2009 I called and booked a flight
from Anchorage Alaska to San Francisco through Salt Lake city and
back, paying the difference in the ticket cost and other associated
fees at that time.
I got the flight booked and even picked seats for the flight and was
assured an itinerary would be sent out at once so I could make
arrangements with other parties I need to contact in San Francisco.
Upon checking my email the next
day I noticed the itinerary was still not there, so I called again and
was assured the flight was booked, and that the itinerary would be
sent out as soon as your customer service rep hung up on their end of
the phone.
Well, I went about my business trusting that your service reps would
be true to their word, however I later checked once more, and it was
still not there so I called again and was assured that by Sunday
morning it would be in my email. Sunday arrived and still no email
from Orbitz. Sunday the 15th is the day I was supposed to contact
several people in the San Francisco area in order to make arrangements
for specialized equipment related to my visit to the area. I called a
total of four times on the evening of the 15th with the following results.
Call #1 - I was told that there was a ticket but that the ticked had
not been fully booked. (How is that possible? I also had a very
difficult time understanding the very heavy accent on the other end of
the line as well as problems with the phone lines cutting in and out.)
As I was trying to sort out the problem I was hung up on.
Call #2 - I was referred to three different people, none of who I
could understand well, who informed me that there was a ticked booked,
but that it takes up to 48 hours for me to get an itinerary. I
explained that I had been waiting for 48 hours. Then your
representatives tried to tell me that my email account was not
working, the very same email account that I had just been reading
recently received emails on. I assured her that my email was working,
but also when I commented to my wife that I was no longer going to do
business with your company in the future, I was then abruptly hung up
on by her.
Call #3 - I was told by another customer service rep that I could
barely understand or hear due to bad phone lines, that now there was
no ticket on my record at all. And that there was no record of me
booking a flight. I asked to speak to a supervisor, whereupon I
waited on hold for ten minutes and was hung up on before being able to
speak to one.
Call #4 - My wife actually made this call as by this time I was in no
mood to deal with the substandard customer service and mistreatment I
had received thus far. She called the number provided on your website,
asked for a customer service supervisor and had been held on hold for
over an hour with no one even coming on to the phone lines to tell her
that she will be taken care of sometime in the near future. When
someone finally came on the phone my wife was informed by "Corrine"
that the itinerary
was posted on a third party site not even affiliated with Orbitz,
which I had not been informed of, by either your companies website
or your customer service representatives which I had tried to deal
with previously.
There had been no attempt to solve the small problem I had originally
by your regular customer service representatives, which, was just
wanting a copy of my flight itinerary. And the fact that my Itinerary
was posted to a third party website without my knowledge or permission
is inexcusable. I am beyond incensed at my treatment by your company,
your lack of accountability for your poor customer service and to be
sure that this is not something that happens to others I will be
posting copies of this message to you, the CEO of Orbitz to the local
and National Better Business Bureaus, as well as all of the many sites
now available on the internet which detail your companies long history
of substandard customer care and lack of business ethics.
Should you care to respond to my complaints you may do so at
EVBranscum@yahoo. com
Rest assured however that whatever you send will be forwarded to all
my friends, acquaintances, business relationships and again to the
many websites which have detailed your companies history of bad
business practices toward your customers.
Sincerely,
Edgar V. Branscum
No comments:
Post a Comment