TrishaLyn's Tumblr Rambles

ZOMFG!  So, Thursday Dom & I decide to head north to Humboldt county for the long weekend to check out the logging museums and redwood roadside attractions we never had time to see when I actually lived there.  I jump online to Expedia and book a room at the HoJo down the street from where I used to live in Arcata.  We arrived there at a little after 7pm tonight to discover that they’ve been sold out of rooms for 2 weeks and Expedia was glitching and still selling rooms for them.  So the front desk guy gives us the number and we call to get placed at another hotel or motel. The first call I’m on for 15 minutes wherein the woman is incredibly rude, tells me there’s nowhere else nearby to stay, doesn’t offer me any options (or even my $ back) with a rude “What do you want me to do about it?” when I say “I want you to friggin help me” and she then informs me that she’s going to terminate the call because of my foul language.  That I didn’t use, as I literally said “friggin” because I was trying NOT to cuss.

So I call back, and I ask for the manager and basically am refused transfer and talk to whom may, in fact, be the same woman.  I take a better tone, she seems like she’s helping and doesn’t put me on hold, but says hold on.  She had admitted to me at one point that there was no manager for me to talk to.  I’m whispering to Dominic away from the phone what’s going on and I GUESS at some point we might have used some blue language, and she says “ma’am I’m terminating this call because of the foul language I’ve overheard”  WHAT THE FUCK?!  That call lasted an additional 25 minutes and sucked the remaining life I had out of my phone battery. So we realize that we’d called their partner number and Dominic jumps on his phone to call Expedia direct.  He gets a hold of someone who seems very helpful and instead of keeping him in hold, offers to call him back in 10 minutes.  So, having sat in the car in the HoJo parking lot for over an hour at this point, we head over to get gas & end up parked in the grocery store parking lot.  We wait for about 30 mins and the girl calls back with an update that she’s still on hold trying to get someone from lodging services on the line herself to help with this whole debacle.  At least she has given us her name, apologized for the situation, and assured us that they’d help us get somewhere to stay for the night after driving 6 hours to get up here.  Even though I went to college here, it’s been 7 years since and everyone I knew has since moved away like I did.

So, we decide that our plans to hit one of the breweries in Eureka or the Chinese food place I love in Arcata have passed as it’s almost 9pm.  We wander into Pantry to eat, and about 20 minutes into our meal, someone calls back with news.  Then they put Dom on hold.  Basically, poor Dominic ate his dinner with the phone glued to one ear because this new girl kept putting Dom back on hold for long bouts while she tried to get things worked out.  This went on for almost 2 FUCKING HOURS!  Finally, they get back on with some story about how they’ve had to go out of the Expedia network to get us a room for two nights, how there’s a large price discrepancy and they’re paying for it with the Expedia corporate credit card and how that took forever to authorize because their system was having problems as well as the hotel’s system (some cruel technological twist of fate, apparently).  This was after they tried to sell Dominic on getting us this room and making us pay the difference… which was a no go since I looked at the rates for where we’ve ended up and it’s twice as expensive as HoJo. After all that bullshit… 4 hours of our mini vacation in Humboldt county totally blown on being on the phone with Expedia and their piece of shit subsidieries, terrible customer service for the most part, a ruined evening and having to face the possibility of NOT getting a room at all and having to drive 6 hours back home… we’re here at the much nicer rooms of the Blue Lake Casino & Hotel on Expedia’s dime.  We arrived here at 11:00 with two dead cell phone batteries and two headaches.

I have to say this about Expedia… (1) I’ve never had anywhere near this kind of problem with them before.  (2) I know it’s a holiday weekend, but that’s no excuse to have your affiliated company give shitty service and hang up on me TWICE. (3) To their credit, they are paying the difference for this room, which is a lot nicer than where we would have stayed, so it works out in our favor.  And potentially (If I understood Dominic right) they’re putting some kind of credit on my Expedia account for the hassle. (4) We still plan to call Expedia on Tuesday and talk to the highest level manager we can to tell them what a ridiculous hassle this was, caused entirely by their miscommunication with HoJo about the rooms availability, and express our incredible disappointment in the level of service we received.  Hopefully, we’ll still have time between tomorrow and when we leave somtime Monday night to get in the 2 museums, 2 must-hit restaurants, and Trees of Mystery that we want to hit.  Oy… so much for a relaxing Labor Day weekend!

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