Is this enough compensation? Orbitz calls off its collection agency, but …

Ah, the perils of being your own travel agent.

Polly Pedersen knows about them all too well after she tried to book airline tickets from Philadelphia to Detroit on Orbitz.

“A screen came up saying ‘technical difficulties,’” she says. “So I thought, “OK, they’re having problems with their site. I’ll book elsewhere.’”

For future reference, it’s not OK to book elsewhere when you get an error message as you’re buying an airline ticket. You have to make sure the reservation didn’t get made. Otherwise you could end up with two tickets for the same flight.

One way is to check your “in” box. Although Pedersen says she did, the message was filtered to her spam folder. The only evidence that Orbitz had finished the transaction was a $2 charge on her credit card. She thought Orbitz had billed her for using the site.

“There was no reservation or confirmation from Orbitz until four days later,” she says. By then, she’d already booked the same flight through Travelocity. “I spoke to a customer service person right away and got nowhere. A manager called back and left a message: ‘Too bad, but we can’t help you.’”

So Pedersen did what any self-respecting consumer would do when an intransigent business refuses to refund an erroneous purchase: she disputed her credit card bill.

And she won.

That didn’t sit well with Orbitz, which was on the hook for her Delta Air Lines tickets. It referred the case to a collection agency, which contacted Pedersen and did all the awful things collection agencies do, including threatening to ruin her credit rating.

Pedersen contacted me to see if I could talk some sense into Orbitz. I asked Orbitz about her case, and it reconsidered the whole collection agency thing. The online travel agency offered her ticket credits if she agreed to settle up her bill. But she’d still have to pay a $150 change fee to rebook her tickets.

A quick call to Delta got the fee reduced to $50, and for her, it was a small price to pay to get a collection agency off her back.

“I am very relieved,” she says. “Next time, I’ll book directly through the airline. No more online! My kids forbid me.”

I’m happy for her, too. I guess the real question is: Whose technical problems were they in the first place? Did the Orbitz servers go on the blink, or did Pedersen’s Internet connection fail at the precise moment she was trying to buy tickets?

If the problem was on Orbitz’ side, why should this customer have to pay for tickets she didn’t want? And a collection agency? Come on, that’s a little heavy-handed, don’t you think?

Still, this is a lot better than where Pedersen started, with some collection agency harassing her. But did Orbitz — and Delta — do enough for this customer?

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  • Sam Varshavchik

    You are conflating two separate things. One, is the collections itself, and two, whatever appears on one’s credit report. The two things are related, but they are not the same.

    As far as collections goes, a FOAD letter will stop collectors from harassing you. After a FOAD letter, the collection agency’s only option is to take you to court. And, as I said, the collection agencies are not going to waste time on someone who’s going to fight them, when there are plenty of more easy pickins that they expect to get easy default judgements on. Of course, if the debt was for a substantial sum, and the debt collector felt they had all their ducks in a row, the chances of them deciding to take it to court will be higher. But for most small potato-fry cases, the collection agencies will only take action when the debtor does not respond, and thus is likely not to answer the summons, and give the debt collector an easy default judgement.

    Of course, there will always be exceptions, and an occasional sleazebag who will continue to harass you after getting a FOAD letter. For those cases, you sic a NACA lawyer on them.

    The story was solely about the debt collector’s harassment of the consumer, I didn’t read anything about a credit report. As far as credit report goes, and any collection items there, that’s a separate topic, and gets handled differently.

  • Mr. Consumer

    In regard to credit reporting agencies if that item shows up on your report, dispute it.
    They will then verify the ‘debt’ and reply back to you that it is valid.
    You then write them (certified return receipt) and say that you will sue them if it remains on your report.
    They will then take it off as they are reporting agencies not defending agencies and do not want to take the time or money to defend it.
     
    An organized consumer can get back at these companies that think they can push us around because of their size.
     
    Another thing if you get a collection letter you must respond within a certain number of days by certified mail and always get a receipt.
    If they continue to call or even years later you can sue them and get damages.
     
    Remember too there is a statue of limitations (usually 5 years), after that the debt is uncollectable.

  • ChrisY

    I’d love to see a screenshot with the supposed “technical difficulties” message.  It would cast aside (most) doubt that she really did experience that and didn’t just make up the story about getting that message.  Usually it’s accompanied by further instructions or information which could clue us in on how Orbitz handles the situation.

  • http://twitter.com/flutiefan flutiefan

    but were your debts valid, Sam? i have valid debts that went to collections (2 while i was disputing my insurance company’s decision to deny coverage, and 1 where i closed an account and apparently still had a small balance that i was unaware of, and the company failed to send the notices to my new address–which they did have on file–for so long that it went to collections).  so if i’d just sent those collections people a certified letter, i would’ve been absolved? somehow i don’t think so!  but if you’re saying it’s only on false or mishandled debts then maybe…

  • http://theinfamousj.livejournal.com/ TheInfamousJ

    According to the story, the confirmation from Orbitz /did/ show up, but it got sent to the spam folder and thus she never saw it with her eyes until after the credit card reported a charge.

  • http://theinfamousj.livejournal.com/ TheInfamousJ

    Or she could just be really bad at the internet. My mother is really bad at the internet and this – not checking spam folder, thinking  that you have to pay to use a travel ticket site, not knowing what to do with a temporary 404 message – sounds like something that could happen with/to her. Especially the part about her admitting that her kids forbid her from doing this again. Lord knows, I’m long suffering on having to fix my mother’s constant e-mistakes and have banned her from such sites as Amazon. She’ll admit this after telling the story of the screw up that led to it.

    For what it is worth, on a direct booking with Ryanair (don’t ask), I got an error page after entering my credit card info. However, I saw the email that said my booking had been made. Too high a server load for the confirmation page, I suppose. It happens.

  • http://theinfamousj.livejournal.com/ TheInfamousJ

    Or she could just be really bad at the internet. My mother is really bad at the internet and this – not checking spam folder, thinking  that you have to pay to use a travel ticket site, not knowing what to do with a temporary 404 message – sounds like something that could happen with/to her. Especially the part about her admitting that her kids forbid her from doing this again. Lord knows, I’m long suffering on having to fix my mother’s constant e-mistakes and have banned her from such sites as Amazon. She’ll admit this after telling the story of the screw up that led to it.

    For what it is worth, on a direct booking with Ryanair (don’t ask), I got an error page after entering my credit card info. However, I saw the email that said my booking had been made. Too high a server load for the confirmation page, I suppose. It happens.

  • Wayne Dayton

    On-line travel agencies are the bane of the industry…they add nothing to the mix.  Use the airline site or a real travel agency.  On-line agencies don’t even spend the money to have an error-free purchasing experience…and then they use heavy-handed thug tactics to try to collect.  The OP should take them to Small Claims Court…they won’t show, and she will win..and then she can harass their arrogant and aloof CEO for the money.

  • Ckbtvl

    Orbitz was wrong, but the client is also cutting off her options by going to the airline site. Go to an ASTA travel agent that will search all of the airlines. It’s worth the small fees charged. I saved a student $600.00 on an international ticket by using one of my consolidators, that was a 1/3 savings and a $40.00 charge. We are the travel agents, not the internet.

  • MikeZ

    I completely agree. She not only has to pay for the tickets, but then the change fee to use them. She also has a specific time limit to use the tickets as well.

    I would have stuck to my guns and told Orbitz to go pound salt. Even if her internet connection went down, it wouldn’t have a message saying “technical difficulties” nothing comes up and you get the standard connection failed notice from IE, FireFox,Chrome, or any of the other browsers. They screwed up and now she paid for their screw up, even after she won the case with the CC company.

    In fact, i not only would have told Orbitz to go pound salt, but I would have told the collection agency that I will sue them if they attempt to ruin my credit rating. In fact, I think it might be illegal for them to post the collection to her credit once she has disputed the charges with them.

  • JJWeldon

    The BBB doesn’t handle debt collectors.  The BBB has recently been exposed as allowing “sponsoring business” (businesses that pay a fee) to mediate the complaints.  That makes them just PR people for the businesses in my book. 

    Read the New York Times series on it:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/your-money/27haggler.html

  • Mike H

    Orbitz sent her an email – they can’t help it if she has set her privacy restrictions so tight that Orbitz’ email went to the spam filter.  And they even charged her card.

    This is a case of a person who is not tech-savvy committing to a purchase, but not realizing that she had committed to a purchase.

    As you (Christopher) make it sound like a big deal that the credit card company sided with her in the dispute.  Who is the credit card company’s customer, the one they want to keep happy?  In my opinion Orbitz was right to send the collection agency after her – she reneged on a contract.

  • Raven

    Good to know. I had a case of mistaken identity by Bank One. I was polite the first five times they called and I sent them a letter telling them to leave me alone, but they wouldn’t call off the dogs. So, I just started cussing at whoever was on the other end when they called. I also found the office of the president online and sent a copy of the original “leave me alone” letter and a letter telling them I would never do business with such an organization…and that I would bad mouth them at every given chance.

    The calls stopped, but I still tell the story because these people were such idiots.

  • Raven

    Oh ho. Thank you for this information…

  • Raven

    Oh ho. Thank you for this information…

  • Ted

    I was once in the middle of making reservations for a flight on Virgin America when their website went down. (It wasn’t my Internet connection. They were running a sale — though not for the time I was flying — and their servers couldn’t handle the traffic.)

    When the site came back online an hour later, the flight I had chosen had gone up in price.

    I called them, asking them to honor the original price. The rep refuse, saying that whatever the site says at a given time is final, no matter what.

    I asked him to make an exception, since my delay in paying for the ticket was clearly their fault. But he wouldn’t budge.

    I ended up buying the ticket anyway, but it left me with a sour taste about their customer service. It’s far from the worst thing an airline has ever done, but given a choice, in the future I’ll probably choose JetBlue.

  • Anonymous

    You usually don’t get charged unless you click on the ‘buy’ and confirm button.  Orbitz will usually give you a reference number on the transaction and email you your itinerary.  Four days for email to be received is suspicious.

  • steve martin

    the fact that the confirmation from Orbitz didn’t show up until four days after the fact makes me believe the problem was on their end, not hers.  Even if she called her CC company to check on whether there was a charge, if the charge wasn’t processed until the next day, how would she know.  I might check Orbitz or Travelocity to see which carriers serve a given destination, but I would book directly with an airline. 

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