Airlines suck, Orbitz.com...edited

[this is edited from the original post, orbitz saw this post
and commented, then responded by email with a voucher and an apology,
which was nice of them]



Orbitz.com is crap and should be shunned. (what's the hypertext
for shunning?) They added travel insurance to a ticket I bought
($40!), it must have been opt in because I certainly didn't click
no travel insurance (sic). Then, the return ticket is non-changeable
after flying the first leg. If I were an honest person and writing
the fare rules, I'd put that first, before the "changeable with a fee"
line. screw them, I break with thee, here's some dog poopoo for your shoes.

Continental.com's website was written by teenagers. it blows up when
I use a credit card with an italy address, when I used a card that still
has an american address it appeared that it bought the ticket, giving a message
that the return leg hasn't been ticketed because it's on a partner, but
in reality none of it was ticketed because the credit card was declined
due to suspected fraud (BofA sucks too), but Continental's crap website
didn't say that, it gave a confirmation number and it looked like the
ticket was there.

Of course when my family tried to travel on that ticket, there was no ticket,
never purchased, declined. They ended up traveling on cash on hand, piggy
banks and borrowed money. While I was alternately calling bofA and continental
trying to figure out what was going on, the receipt for the ticket from
continental drifted down like snow into my in box. What the hell.

I finally downloaded skype so I had a phone that could call 1800 numbers
for free (no iguana needed) but I had no headphones and had to spend a
morning shouting into my keyboard trying to shout at continental and
BofA. (their answer, we're sorry but fuck off)

So to recap, I'm an idiot for not calling and confirming tickets, but I have
an excuse, I was traveling in a foreign land where my cell phone connects via
iguana. Orbitz sucks and it will be a cold day in hell before I use them again.
Continental sucks and their website sucks, but until KLM starts flying more
in the western hemisphere we're screwed.

Edited with strikethroughs. added this rant:

I think there's a business opportunity for a travel agent that handles travel, hotels and taxi's. Corporate travel departments do such a poor job of buying tickets that I tend to go online and find them myself and buy them, but if you call the airlines they charge $20 for the call. If I was running an airline, rather than screwing customers out of $50 for a bag to improve profitability, I'd be stealing customers by waving the bag fee if you show the competitor's elite card, and instead of charging
to call for a ticket, sell-up while you've got a customer on the phone.

Anyway, there's a gap between on the web retailers and walk-in travel agents that sell tours and cruises.