As If I Had the Time

For anyone contemplating using Cheap Tickets.com... BEWARE (I jsut sent this to them, and now I send it to the world):

Dear Cheap Tickets Customer Service,

I have had the worst customer service experience in my life this afternoon with cheap tickets.com. At this point not only would I NOT recommend cheap tickets-regular or gold--to anyone, but I would go out of my way to steer people away from you.

In brief, I tried to change an existing reservation online and got the message it couldn't be changed online. So I called the customer service number. It took forever to get through the automated prompt system as the speech recognition program did not understand me. Finally I got to Mike Young who told me I couldn't change my cheap tickets reservation without upgrading to gold membership because cheap tickets was no longer changing reservations over the phone. The call was recorded so you can check the veracity of my statements. So I asked could I change an existing cheap tickets reservation through the gold service reservations if I upgraded and he said YES.

So I bought a membership--which I am canceling right now and burning in effigy. I then called the reservation number (800-211-4771) he gave me and went through another phone tree to an agent who asked for my (temporary) membership number and my record locator number. When she looked at the record locator she said, "Oh that looks like a cheap tickets reservation, you'll have to speak to a cheap tickets agent" and she transferred me to Tiffany.

I found out later that Tiffany was in Technical Support, not reservations or customer service, but she was nonetheless as helpful as she could be. She tried to transfer me to cheap tickets customer service and I asked her to stay with me as I had already been transferred, I was told, to cheap tickets. She stayed on hold with me FOR OVER 30 MINUTES. We never got through. She tried a couple of different numbers and people and finally got someone in cheap tickets gold reservations who said Mike Young had lied and there was NO ONE in the gold service who could help me. So not only did I waste time I do not have signing up for a service I do not need, but I NEVER WAS ABLE TO DO WHAT I NEED TO DO WHICH IS CHANGE THE RETURN ON TICKET XXXXXXXXXXXXXX*. Tiffany suggested I write you, and maybe call back to try to change the ticket tomorrow. In the meantime I have spent over AN HOUR and accomplished nothing.

Sincerely,
Brenda Griffith

*Removed for privacy reasons