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Old November 30th, 2004, 09:21 PM
Gregory Morrow
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Webmaster wrote:

I think that for hotels travel agencies are still better than the

Internet.



That depends. For some travel products, particularly cruises and escorted
tours, a travel agent can be invaluable. Also, say if you are booking a
complicated/expensive itinerary they can be a big help...

For straight flights or hotel reservations, though, the internet is a pretty
valuable resource, it gives you the consumer a lot of power and a lot of
choices...


They have better deals and such things happen less often when you have
someone to yell at in front of you.



Try yelling at a travel agent and see if they'll continue to cultivate your
business :-)


A friend of mine had a similar nightmare with Expedia. He had reserved
and hotel in New York and paid it in advance with Credit Card trough the
Internet.

Unfortunately, on the day he was supposed to fly from Rome, there was
the blackout in New York, so all flight were switched to the next day.

He called Expedia to tell them that he would not be able to be in NY,
but their call center told him to send an email, which he could not do
being away from his Computer. He asked them the phone number of the
Hotel, but they would not give him.



Huh? It's easy enough to find a hotel's phone number, it's a no - brainer.
And in such cases it behooves one to always, ALWAYS call the hotel to
discuss the situation - in fact when booking a travel service via *any*
method, ALWAYS call the carrier, hotel, or tour operator to confirm you
reservation status beforehand, whether there is a problem or not (I always
double - check to just be sure...) Calling Expedia is really not going to
help in a delay situation...

The above is just basic horse sense, if everyone followed it there would be
a lot fewer bad situations for travellers...


Well when he finally got to New York, then room he had paid for a week
had been sold to someone else and no money was ever given back to him as
refund.



Did he even try to adjuticate the matter? If Expedia wouldn't help, he can
always contest the charge with his credit card company...they are required
to investigate such matters if a written query is made.

--
Best
Greg