Originally Posted by
pgengler
Oh hey, a captive audience for my Orbitz story!
In April 2010 I booked a flight through Orbitz from Newark to Rome for our honeymoon. The online process didn't have a step for picking seats, and we ended up with seats in completely different parts of the plane. I called Orbitz that same day and asked if they could change the seats to get us together, which they did...sort of. The website reflected the new seats, with a "These seats are confirmed" message. So imagine my surprise when I get to the airport for checkin and we're assigned to the original seats.
At that point, there were only two seats together left on the plane, which we took. [They were terrible seats, right next to the mid-cabin lavs and in front of a row with enough legroom that people would cut through but not enough room to do that without banging into the back of our seats. It was a miserable flight.]
While we were waiting to board the plane, I called Orbitz. I got some runaround about how "sometimes the airline needs to change the seats", without getting any attempt at an explanation about how they ended up being the exact seats we originally had (same for the return flight) or any explanation of how "These seats are confirmed" actually meant something more like "Some seats are confirmed."
In short: Orbitz is terrible and no one should ever use them. Whenever someone asks me about what site they should use to book a flight, I get to tell this story to get them to use somewhere else. So, good job guys.
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