UPDATE TO POST

Just wanted to send a big thank you to everyone who commented, both with constructive advice, and more importantly as the trolls that we all expect to keep up the reddit gold standard.

Most useful comments definitely came from "u/swalsh411". Thanks for the back and forth!

The best/funniest troll comment by far goes to:

u/blacksoulo - "MUH CAPITOL"

This post has been driven up in popularity and the input/advice/discussions we've had have clarified my opinion of the legal issues, no matter how much I feel screwed by them. Orbitz has been shown to provide a terrible customer experience as I and others have shared, and I hope this scenario serves as a cautionary tale.

Two main take aways:

1. Use a credit card for your purchases
2. Don't book travel through Orbitz without being aware of the risks

Thanks again!

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ORIGINAL POST:

Here is a history of the situation that I'm looking for input on. I copied this from a post I originally made on pissed consumer after adding dates for reference.

Orbitz is aware of this issue based on my conversations with customer service, their FAQ on "Pending Charges", and the other similar stories online with them. I don't feel that they have taken the necessary steps that a reasonable person would take to properly disclose the risk of multiple transactions and holds that will be processed when these "booking error - try again" messages are presented.

Any input would be great. Thanks in advance.

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Day 1 - Friday, December 2

My wife and I attempted to book a flight for an upcoming trip for 6 members of our family using Orbitz.com.We entered all of the information for each and every passenger, then hit submit to process the payment with our credit card.

We then received an error message from Orbitz stating something to the effect of "your transaction was unable to be processed at this time - please try again later". After rechecking all of the detail and dealing with this frustration a few more times, my wife and I decided to just rebook the trip through another travel website.

Day 2 - Saturday, December 3

After having to call the new travel website's customer service team to discuss a few details about the tickets we were ready to book, we discovered that our credit card had been declined. Since this is the card we use on a daily basis for the majority of our purchases and spending, I quickly logged on to see what the issue might be.

Since Orbitz had so much trouble successfully processing our transaction, you can imagine how shocked I was to discover how successful they HAD actually been at processing the charge for said failed transaction. They charged my account exactly 12 times for a total of $28,392. After waiting for 40 minutes to speak with my bank's customer service team to dispute this issue, the bank indicated that the transactions were authorized to be paid out, and that I would need to initiate a billing dispute when they cleared the pending status. In the mean time, the bank said they would be unable to remove the hold from my account.

I did a quick google search to see if I was the only person that has had this issue, and several results popped up regarding Orbitz having a habit of this. In addition to other posts by frustrated consumers, Orbitz themselves have a FAQ topic dedicated to this very issue called "Pending Charges". In this FAQ, they simply suggest their customers wait 5 days for the issue to clear through the bank. Maybe they assumed they could just piss off their customers with $100 holds for hotel reservations that never went through, so they never invested in fixing the actual issue.

At this point, I called the Orbitz customer service team. I first spoke with "Amin", a Tier 1 customer service rep who was unable to articulate much of a solution that would do anything other than waste more of my time. He stated that the Orbitz billing department was currently closed, so he wouldn't be able to get anyone to assist from that end. I had asked to speak with a supervisor very early in the call with "Amin" as this was clearly not a normal issue, however it took him over an hour to get a Tier 2 customer service rep named "Harold" on the phone for me.

"Harold" then spent another 2+ hours on the phone with me, as well as on a conference call with my bank, before coming to the same exact conclusion that I would simply need to wait this out. I then asked to be escalated to the next level of customer service as I didn't feel that this was being handled well. "Harold" stated that a supervisor from the corporate customer service office in Las Vegas would give me a call to discuss, but that they wouldn't be able to do anything for me either. A few hours later I received a call from "Kamal O." from the Las Vegas corporate tier 3 customer service team.

"Kamal" started the call by saying he had "heard I was having trouble booking a flight on their website". Clearly he didn't think that a call back being requested by a customer from a Tier 3 supervisor was important enough to first pull up any notes to read up on the exact issue before calling. I explained the issue was a little more than a little website trouble, and immediately asked to speak to his supervisor if he would be unable to assist me. A few minutes later, "Ivy" from the Las Vegas office got on the phone to discuss.

She indicated that she would need to escalate this to her manager, and that this manager reported directly to the CEO of Orbitz, but that this manager would call me back within 5 business days. She also stated that this was the largest amount for this issue that she had ever seen, and had worked there for a long time.

Day 3 - Sunday, December 4

Pending charges are still on the card, and my newly limited available funds force me to pass on making certain purchases.

No contact has been made to my wife or I from Orbitz during the day.

Day 4 - Monday, December 5

Wake up to find pending charges still on my account.