Back in April I booked a trip to Carmel, CA to attend a workshop with Kim Weston. I made all the travel plans through Travelocity (air, rental car, hotel). Got my confirmation for everything the same day. Around $750 for the entire trip. Good price. Maybe too good?
**UPDATE: October 1, 2008** Travelocity has come through with their promise to refund the hotel part of their charges. Thanks!! **
Come September I merrily go on my way to the airport. Great flights. Rental car is the one I expected, and its waiting for me in Monterey. Have lunch with a good friend. Go visit the seals on the piers in Monterey. Everything going great.
Then I get to the hotel (Carmel Inn and Suites)...
Oh, we're sorry. We do not have any reservation for you from Travelocity. We don't have any regular rooms available, as we have a wedding in for the weekend. HOWEVER, we do have a King Suite that you can have. But we cannot give you the Travelocity rate, you need to pay full price or a discount if you have a AAA card (which I happened to have with me). They signed me up for the first night and had me call Travelocity to figure out the rest of the problem.
Travelocity talked with the hotel. Didn't seem to accomplish anything. All they could do that day was have me pay the hotel and offer to refund the hotel part of my original Travelocity costs. What could I do? I'm at the hotel. Don't know what, if anything else, is available at better rates. I'm going to start a workshop class early the next morning. I take them up on the refund offer and pay another $716 to the hotel for three nights. Originally it was going to be around $900. But they gave me the AAA discount and moved me to a different (less expensive) room for the middle of the three days. Of course that meant repacking everything each morning to get moved to another room. So now I've paid out $1470 in travel expenses.
Workshop was wonderful. I'll post some photos once I get permission from the models.
And here we are nearing the end of September. No credit yet from Travelocity on my credit card. So I call them again. Go through all the info again. They call the hotel again. They're faxing my original travel plans and information to the hotel again. But this time they are asking the hotel to refund my payment to the hotel instead of Travelocity refunding the travel part of my original payment to Travelocity. Sounds like a better deal to me if it actually happens. But what ever happened to the original refund promised on September 5?
Latest word from Travelocity today is that I need to deal directly with the hotel to get the refund from them.
Check back. I will update this if anything happens.
John Cornicello
