Last night was one of the worst airline customer service experience I've ever had.
Due to all the bad weather in Heathrow the airport is apparently a sh*t show. As far as I can tell the problem is that they just don't know how to de-ice their runways. Our flight was on Virgin Atlantic, scheduled to leave tonight at 7:30. Around 6:30 last night we found out our flight was cancelled (we couldn't check-in on line).
I'll space you step by step details but what it boils down to is that Virgin never actually reached out to inform us of the cancelation. Their website said (its now gone so I guess they updated their wording) that if you booked through someone else to contact them for rebooking. Orbitz claims that since Virgin is the airline we are booked on they were responsible for rebooking us.
So we spent the rest of the night on hold with Orbitz and Virgin. Those of us that got through to Virgin got some help, but not much. Some were told we had to request our refund through Orbitz.
Orbitz said they couldn't make changes or issue a refund because Virgin was the carrier and was responsible for rebooking us. Some people we spoke to didn't even see that our flight was cancelled! Even though it was cancelled on both Virgins website and Heathrow's. Even as late as this morning someone in our party was being told by Orbitz that we should "make our way to the airport as our flight was still scheduled to take off"
Below is the response I received in email from Orbitz regarding our issue. This sums up what we were told over and over and over again by the Orbitz people.
Dear Meredith,
Due to the Longon Heathrow airport being closed due to weather and not knowing when it will be opening, at this point there are probably few options because of limited seat availability due to the holiday. The information posted on their website advises they probably won't have a schedule back in effect until
December 23, 2010 and there will limited availability to rebook customers. If you want to apply for a refund Orbitz can process the refund.
I have checked availability and cannot find seats to Mumbai until December 30, 2010 and there are not six seats available on the flights. The reason Orbitz advises you to contact Virgin Atlantic, is because Virgin Atlantic has not yet notified Orbitz of what procedures we must follow to rebook our passengers who are booked on their flights. Your flights need to be rebooked on Virgin Atlantic as the airlines do not allow Orbitz to transfer your tickets to another airline.
I wish my reply could be more favorable. Once the London airport opens up, and flights return to normal more flights may become available to rebook passengers on. The only thing I could tell you at this point is to keep trying to get through to Virgin Atlantic, which I understand will be very difficult.
This was HOURS after our flight had been cancelled, hours after we were first told to contact ORBITZ. Eventually, (around 1:30is am) we all finally forced Orbitz to process refunds and we scrambled to find flights on any airline. Four of us are on a flight that leaves Christmas day from JFK flying through Barcelona and Istanbul. We get in on the 27th. The wedding is on the 25th.
Virgins complete lack of communication with Orbitz stalled us from making alternate arrangements. We lost hours of time negotiating with customer service agents who were quick to point the finger at someone else, during this time we could have possibly booked on alternate flights (for example similar route to what we got only several days earlier). Heathrow should be more prepared for snow. From what I understand this happens regularly with them. Virgin needs to communicate with their ticket resellers. Almost everything in that email was directly contradicted by customer service reps at Virgin. Maybe this is why Southwest doesn't sell on outside websites...
If Virgin had communicated properly with Orbitz we might not be missing the wedding or spending Christmas in an airport.
This whole thing has been stressful and upsetting. I'm hoping that we eventually get there, and I'm sure once we do things will start to look up.
side note: Sprint no longer has international data plans of any kind, so my blogging won't be as often as it was when I was in Asia this summer. Sorry, blame Sprint.
