The return of Angry Mike – A love letter to Orbitz

Guess what folks, Angry Mike is still pretty angry and apparently his ire has been piqued by the discount travel service Orbitz. Quake with fear, Orbitz, Angry Mike is gunning for YOU!!

A Love Letter to Orbitz
By “Love” I mean: “Go Fuck Yourself”


So I buy a ticket from Baltimore to Vegas: $367, slightly cheaper than Southwest’s $427 ticket. Yay Orbitz!

That’s where my praise for them ends. Word comes down that I am heading to California for work, so I decide to change my ticket to San Diego->Vegas. $150 airline fee + $30 Orbitz fee, leaves me with plenty to purchase the ticket, I should actually have a $40 credit with United. I get my confirmation emails, everything seems good to go. That is, until I get to San Diego airport and am ready to leave, where I discover they still have me booked on Baltimore->Vegas, and allegedly it would cost a fortune to book me, because they have to go by today’s prices, not what Orbitz booked me for. SWEEET.

After spending over an hour on the phone (probably 45 minutes of which on hold) in the terminal, I am told that Orbitz screwed the pooch, and there are no flights left on United to Vegas. My options are: buy a ticket out of pocket and Orbitz will reimburse me, rent a car out of pocket and get reimbursed, go buy some sleeping pills and eat them and Orbitz will reimburse my family (for the sleeping pills, not the ticket), or Suicide bomb Orbitz HQ and get reimbursed in virgins. Grudgingly, I take the non suicide option as there is nothing they can book for me to move forward. I ask and re-re-re-confirm that I will be reimbursed for the full amount of whatever ticket I buy. The lovely and helpful terminal agents find me a flight on Southwest $154: PERFECT. I go, pay, get a reciept and am on my merry way.

When I get back to Baltimore, I fax the receipt to Orbitz for my refund (also, I was not emailed the information on my refund by the idiot woman on the phone as promised, but whatever) and ask them to call me to verify it was received. No call, no email…no nothing. So I call and verify, yes it has been received, and yes my reimbursement will go through. At no time was I informed that I would be charged ANOTHER $150 fee on top of the one I had erstwhile been charged.

$150… to book my own goddamn flight. Outrageous, even if I had not been promised a full refund. So I call again, and apparently it is not Orbitz’s policy, it’s THE AIRLINE’S POLICY that I need to be charged $150 for the change. Apparently, the airlines are so hard up for money they have to charge you to book a flight on ANOTHER AIRLINE. Either that or the fine folks at Orbitz are goddamn grade A dunces. In summation, Orbitz thinks it’s cool for me to pay $400 for a flight, pay to change it, have them not actually change it, pay for a replacement flight, and charge me a fee to do so (not even through their service). How about I place my testicles in a drawer and slam it so you can have hold music that notifies the customer of the experience they are about to have.

So I’m on hold now AGAIN, with a supervisor saying I agreed to be out the cost of my original changed flight, and this new flight, less $4. Essentially out of $521 dollars in travel costs, nearly 2 hours on the phone, probably like 10 grey hairs, and I’m due back a whopping $4. When asked to use some common sense to the person on the phone, this brilliant human example of the efficiency of outsourcing tells me he is merely going on what was in the notes. Why in God’s name would I agree to be reimbursed $4? I would have saved myself countless hours of my time, and a shitload of stress and just booked the flight on my own! WOW….

Ultimately, i was reimbursed $100 in cash, and a $50 voucher. So technically I was “reimbursed” however I never got the original flight cost (I should have been refunded that entire amount since I didn’t take the flight, and it was their fault) but since I never got on the flight, and they were non-refundable tickets, I was due nothing. Trying to fight that battle would be like trying to teach calculus to a ham sandwich, a RETARDED ham sandwich. What I’m getting at is that it would be hard and ultimately not worth it. In closing, I’d like to invite Orbitz to fornicate with their own face.

Thank you very little.

2 thoughts on “The return of Angry Mike – A love letter to Orbitz

  1. I feel your pain. I had to buy two tickets (instead of one) on Travelocity because of a typo on my first name-a mistake I caught 2 months before the actual flight.

    I’d like to market a urinal cake portfolio for airports that feature the logo (or face) of the major airlines, travel agents, or online ticket agents.

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