Complaint Review: Travelocity

My boyfriend and I decided to book a last minute cruise. We had been keeping an eye on rates for a few weeks as we finalized childcare, work, etc., and noticed that prices were going up and tickets disappearing fast as the cruises grew nearer. When we finally had everything in place and were ready to book, we picked a Royal Caribbean cruise through Travelocity that was in our price range. We went through the booking process, entered our credit card info and submitted the form. Yay! We're going on a cruise! Right?Nope. I checked my email about an hour later and saw the Travelocity confirmation, which said the reservation was pending. Weird. So I waited another two hours and checked again, still pending.

Ok, I'm getting nervous because I knew that things were booking up FAST. So we called RC to see if they had us in their system yet and surprisingly, not only did they have no record of us but the cabin number that Travelocity had assigned to us was under someone else's name. Ok, got on the phone with Travelocity and the agent told us there was a problem with our reservation. Apparently there were no seatings left for the early and late dinner times, so we had to choose the "My Time" option which affected the cabin selection. The agent offered to fix this by offering an upgrade for $130. What?? I can't have my reserved cabin because of dinner times, unless I pay more money? 

What about the "Travelocity Guarantee: that everything about your booking will be right, or we'll work with our partners to make it right, right away"?? I asked the agent about this and she said they hadn't yet actually charged the card. Really? I held up my end of the deal: booked a cruise cabin advertised on their site and paid in full, expecting everything to be okay. Travelocity did not make any attempt to call me and inform me of the issue, but instead I had to find out 3 hours later by my own diligence. Further, the agent did not make any attempt to correct the situation and only insisted on the $130 upgrade. That sounds like bait and switch to me. Unfortunately, by this time all of the cabins at the price that I booked had been sold. Thanks Travelocity. 

The only saving grace in this situation was the wonderful agent we called next at Royal Caribbean. We explained what Travelocity had done and she worked with us to solve the problem. We ended up paying $40 more than our original price with Travelocity, but she gave us an upgrade to a much larger cabin and was very pleasant and apologetic through the whole process. If it wasn't for her, our vacation may have been ruined.

What gets me is what if we had not checked after 3 hours? What if we had waited until the next day? At what point would Travelocity have contacted us to let us know there was an issue with our reservation? Would ALL of the cabins have been sold out at that point and no resolution available? I will not be using Travelocity to book in the future and I will see to it that neither does anyone that comes within 10 feet of me. Stay away from Travelocity!