In a wave that is growing every day, doing business on the Internet is becoming the norm instead of the exception. With E-bay, Amazon.com, Pay Pal and millions of other legitimate sites available to us, we can buy everything from apples to zebras on the Internet and pay for it with our credit card. The Internet, once used primarily for information and games has become a great interactive commercial highway.

I don't fault this trend and often use it myself to purchase this or that. However, like all good things, there are a few dangers hidden in using the Internet as a shopping network.

I recently had an experience with Travelocity, one of the larger Internet airline, car and hotel reservation services. This experience will preclude me from ever doing business with them again and I felt that other travelers might benefit from my experience. It cost me $106 to learn the lesson I am about to give you at no charge.

I had an occasion to fly from Seattle to Dallas, and then drive some 175 miles to Abilene, Texas. It was a last minute trip in which I had only a few days notice. I made my air and auto reservations through American Express Travel services, an excellent service, by the way, for those of you who have American Express cards. I neglected, however, to make a hotel reservation and, upon realizing this, went to the Travelocity website where I made a two night reservation at an Abilene hotel.

A day and a half before I was to depart, my trip was cancelled due to a series of circumstances beyond my control. Some 30 hours before my scheduled check-in time at the Abilene hotel, I called Travelocity to cancel my hotel reservations. They informed me that there would be a hotel cancellation fee of the first night's stay of $106. Feeling this to be quite an unfair cancellation policy, I immediately sent an email to the hotel (part of a large and well known national chain) and complained about the fee. My e-mail was quickly answered by the hotel manager, who informed me that neither his hotel chain nor his individual hotel had any cancellation policy like that and that the fee must have originated with Travelocity, and not his hotel.

When I complained to Travelocity, I received this e-mail.

Excerpt
"After reviewing your file, it has been determined the reservation was for checkin July 21 and was cancelled on July 20 which is only 24 hours prior to checkin time. Therefore, a one night stay was charged."

I responded with an email telling Travelocity that since the hotel had no such cancellation policy, the one night's stay charge was initiated solely by Travelocity, and that this was, indeed, highly unusual and suspect for a reservation which had been, by their own admission, cancelled 24 hours prior to check-in time.

Other than a boilerplate acknowledgement of my final e-mail to them I never heard from Travelocity, again.

So, the bottom line is simply this. I will never again make any type of reservation through Travelocity and I strongly advise each of you to think twice before using their service for any reservation for hotels, airline tickets or rental cars. If this is how they treat cancellations for hotels, one can only imagine the money grabbing prodedures they have for other types of reservation cancellations. If your original travel plans are changed and you need to alter or cancel all or part of your reservation, then it's Buyer Beware, as Travelocity has policies in place which seem designed for the single purpose of separating the traveler from their money. I feel that because of these policies, it would be more descriptive if Travelocity altered its corporate name slightly to Travelosilly, as that name would be much more in line with their business practices which are, in a word, silly.

I have no knowledge as to whether or not any of the Travelocity competitors utilize this type of penalty. It might be wise to check their policies before using such a service.

My advice for hotel reservations is to either call the specific hotel or use a hotel chain's on-line reservation service, as when changes or cancellations arise, it will save you money.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ken Kreps lives in Los Angeles.  He has written a number of published articles, essays and short stories, as well as numerous consumer pieces.  Ken has also written scripts for Imagination Theater, an award winning audio drama series heard on over 120 commercial radio stations across the nation, as well as on XM Satellite Radio.  He recently completed four short film screenplays.  For the past thirteen years, Ken has concentrated on acting, studying in Los Angeles, Seattle and Dallas.  He has appeared in independant films, network television, television commercials (both local and national), corporate-industrial films, two docudramas on Japanese network television, and various types of voice-over work.

---

Press the Back button to return to the menu for this category. Click here to return to the main page.