Orbitz WTF


  • Impossible Mission - B

    I have a conference in LA next month, so I went to Orbitz to arrange travel.

    :WTF: #1: I found that the interface has changed since the last time I was there, so now I can book a flight, a hotel, a rental car, or any two of the three... but not all three at once. WHY?!?

    :WTF: #2: I asked for a flight from Philadelphia to Bob Hope Airport (an airport in Burbank, a nice part of northern LA). I booked a hotel in Burbank. I looked at the flights, selected a pair with a decent time schedule, and processed and paid for everything, and then it gave me my final itinerary: Philadelphia to LAX. (This is the other local airport, in southern LA. It's over 30 miles away, which can easily represent almost 2 hours depending on traffic.)

    What is this I don't even... Why, Orbitz? Why?



  • @masonwheeler said in Orbitz WTF:

    I looked at the flights, selected a pair with a decent time schedule,

    When you looked at the flights, did you neglect to look at which airport they were arriving at?


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @blakeyrat said in Orbitz WTF:

    When you looked at the flights, did you neglect to look at which airport they were arriving at?

    Why should I have to? I had already input that information, way back at the beginning. That was already decided. The thing I was trying to decide now was timing, not travel endpoints.



  • @masonwheeler said in Orbitz WTF:

    Why should I have to?

    Because if you read the copy, you'd see that it's finding flights NEAR AND AT your destination, not simply AT your destination.

    @masonwheeler said in Orbitz WTF:

    I had already input that information, way back at the beginning.

    Yeah; the website interpreted that as "which city do you want to go to" not "which location down to the inch should the airplane wheels come to a rest at".


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @blakeyrat said in Orbitz WTF:

    Yeah; the website interpreted that as "which city do you want to go to" not "which location down to the inch should the airplane wheels come to a rest at".

    If you don't know the difference between "inch" and "30 miles of some of the worst clogged traffic in the nation", please educate yourself.



  • @blakeyrat said in Orbitz WTF:

    @masonwheeler said in Orbitz WTF:

    Why should I have to?

    Because if you read the copy, you'd see that it's finding flights NEAR AND AT your destination, not simply AT your destination.

    @masonwheeler said in Orbitz WTF:

    I had already input that information, way back at the beginning.

    Yeah; the website interpreted that as "which city do you want to go to" not "which location down to the inch should the airplane wheels come to a rest at".

    Most air travel sites have an option, a checkbox usually, to select "nearby airports", and it usually defaults NOT selected.

    I just booked flights to Connecticut from Florida, and I price shopped between 2 different sites (kayak, chase rewards site) . Both of them defaulted as such.

    It was only when I expanded to nearby airports did I get Ft Lauderdale Airport (the next closest airport to west palm), and I did decide to use that airport because it was cheaper, but only AFTER I chose to expand my region. Because FTL is also 30 miles from WPI.

    Here's the thing, when I'm flying TO a location, transportation while there is probably limited. Such services should default to assuming you don't have adequate transport to get 30 miles across LA. And note, I lived in LA, worked in Burbank, LAX to Bob Hope is FAR... LA traffic is horrendous.



  • Also, this reminded me of an old maddox article on Orbitz



  • @masonwheeler said in Orbitz WTF:

    If you don't know the difference between "inch" and "30 miles of some of the worst clogged traffic in the nation", please educate yourself.

    Oh I know, I just don't care. Why the fuck would I go to LA?


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @blakeyrat said in Orbitz WTF:

    Oh I know, I just don't care. Why the fuck would I go to LA?

    You won't. You're not invited to this conference. 😛


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said in Orbitz WTF:

    Why the fuck would I go to LA?

    Because you were in a terrible car crash, got brain damage, and decided that you really wanted to be a film star?



  • @dkf That's why I bought a car with all the safety features!

    Wait are you doing like a Doc Hollywood joke but you did the plot backwards? Or what is that?

    I liked The Majestic better.



  • @blakeyrat said in Orbitz WTF:

    @masonwheeler said in Orbitz WTF:

    If you don't know the difference between "inch" and "30 miles of some of the worst clogged traffic in the nation", please educate yourself.

    Oh I know, I just don't care. Why the fuck would I go to LA?

    ...

    I don't care, I only chimed in twice on the conversation that no one else but mason was a member of... but I don't care.

    I may have said one thing, then claimed the other in post when demonstrated I'm a moron, because I don't care.

    Fucking moron.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said in Orbitz WTF:

    Because if you read the copy, you'd see that it's finding flights NEAR AND AT your destination, not simply AT your destination.

    The last time I used Orbitz, which was admittedly probably 8+ years ago, you had to explicitly tell it to consider other, nearby airports.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @lordofduct said in Orbitz WTF:

    Because FTL is also 30 miles from WPI.

    Have fun with that drive. I was going up the interstate past the airport once when I passed a van on the side of a road that had managed to wrap an entire mattress around a wheel. Another time I saw an easy chair smack in the middle of the damn road.



  • @FrostCat said in Orbitz WTF:

    @lordofduct said in Orbitz WTF:

    Because FTL is also 30 miles from WPI.

    Have fun with that drive. I was going up the interstate past the airport once when I passed a van on the side of a road that had managed to wrap an entire mattress around a wheel. Another time I saw an easy chair smack in the middle of the damn road.

    Oh Florida, how I love you so.

    Yeah, I used to drive tractor trailer with my pops. Once I got my own truck, I primarily did the local runs for my dad... West Palm to Miami and back, every day (sometimes over to Naples, or up to Tampa).

    For a straight road, on flat terrain, in a state that is mostly sunny... accidents all day and every day.



  • @lordofduct
    @FrostCat

    Oh, and I'm fairly certain I've seen both those instances before as well.

    I would like to say we just happened to be on 95 at the same time... but I'm fairly certain, no, that's just a weekly thing Joe the furniture fetishist does to entertain people stuck in traffic.



  • @masonwheeler said in Orbitz WTF:

    :WTF: #2: I asked for a flight from Philadelphia to Bob Hope Airport (an airport in Burbank, a nice part of northern LA). I booked a hotel in Burbank. I looked at the flights, selected a pair with a decent time schedule, and processed and paid for everything, and then it gave me my final itinerary: Philadelphia to LAX. (This is the other local airport, in southern LA. It's over 30 miles away, which can easily represent almost 2 hours depending on traffic.)
    What is this I don't even... Why, Orbitz? Why?

    Perhaps because BUR is basically a regional airport, and there are exactly zero direct flights from PHL to BUR; every one has at least one stop with an hour layover in ATL, PHX, SLC or some such place. That's no excuse for changing your actual destination if the (sequence of) flights you selected ended up at BUR, but it's not entirely unreasonable to consider LAX as a destination. "Are you sure you really want to spend twice as much on air fare and twice as long sitting in a cramped plane compared to flying to the nearby major airport?"


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @HardwareGeek said in Orbitz WTF:

    Perhaps because BUR is basically a regional airport, and there are exactly zero direct flights from PHL to BUR

    I've done it before. Have things changed that much in the last 2 years?



  • @masonwheeler I just looked at Orbitz. There were no direct flights shown — although it's possible there are some it didn't show me because they're sold out; I picked a hypothetical flight date of tomorrow, I think.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @HardwareGeek said in Orbitz WTF:

    I picked a hypothetical flight date of tomorrow, I think.

    It's usually easier to pick a hypothetical date one or two months out.



  • @dkf said in Orbitz WTF:

    easier

    Better results, yeah, probably. Easier, no. A lot of travel sites default to today or tomorrow (Orbitz didn't have a default), and even if you click the date widget, it opens the current month's calendar; selecting a date further in the future is more work.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @HardwareGeek said in Orbitz WTF:

    Better results, yeah, probably. Easier, no. A lot of travel sites default to today or tomorrow (Orbitz didn't have a default), and even if you click the date widget, it opens the current month's calendar; selecting a date further in the future is more work.

    Clicking twice? 😱



  • @dkf said in Orbitz WTF:

    Clicking twice?

    I already had to click twice. Selecting a date two months in the future would have required like 4 clicks, or something.

    Filed under: Clicking twice? Still too much work for a TDWTF mod.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @lordofduct That exact thing happened to me. Due to airline fuck-ups, my flight to San Jose ended up with my luggage somewhere in the midwest and me in San Francisco. Thankfully I wasn't connecting but meeting my mother, but she had to drive out and get me in the middle of the night.



  • @Yamikuronue Could have been worse - you could have ended up at OAK.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @cvi True story: my mom refused to pull off the highway in Oakland to find a place to pee. She made us all hold it until we got out of the Oakland area. She's also afraid of riding BART alone, which I did at 14 with no problems.



  • @Yamikuronue Yeah, I've heard a lot of mixed things about Oakland. (And I was pretty much told to avoid East Palo Alto - apparently not even cabs would pick you up there.)

    I ended up in OAK once when my friends decided that we could save like $20 by flying from there, instead of SFO. I think we pretty much ended up spending the difference on getting to OAK, though.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @Yamikuronue said in Orbitz WTF:

    riding BART alone

    How do MARGE and HOMER feel about that?



  • @cvi said in Orbitz WTF:

    @Yamikuronue Yeah, I've heard a lot of mixed things about Oakland. (And I was pretty much told to avoid East Palo Alto - apparently not even cabs would pick you up there.)

    That reminded me of something I saw in my local Carrefour. It offers a delivery service: go round the place picking up your food shopping, take it to the special cashier, and they pack it up and send it round the back. From there, it gets put in a refrigerated wagon, and delivered to your home.

    Back when I first started using it, there was a notice up saying that for the safety of the drivers, they would not deliver after 5pm on (list) streets - mostly in Lille-Sud(1) as I recall - and they would not deliver on this and that street(2) at all.

    (1) The part of the core of the Métropole Européenne de Lille that is outside the southern part of the Périphérique (ring-road). A generally dodgy area, similar in nature to, say, Blackbird Leys(3) in Oxford (England). I live just outside the northern part of the Périphérique, in an area whose only claim to dodginess is an occasional problem with Gypsies rummaging in people's rubbish bins.

    (2) One in Lille-Sud, one in a, I guess, similar area in Lomme, not far away from Lille-Sud.

    (3) In 1995, I moved to Oxford. My mother advised me to avoid Blackbird Leys. I told this to the letting agent who was showing me a place on the opposite side of Oxford, and she sort of shuddered at the very thought of the place. Back in 1989, there were riots in various places in England about the "Community Charge" - a revised form of local taxes, commonly called the Poll Tax. The first of these riots was in Blackbird Leys.



  • @cvi said in Orbitz WTF:

    I ended up in OAK once when my friends decided that we could save like $20 by flying from there, instead of SFO. I think we pretty much ended up spending the difference on getting to OAK, though.

    The airport is fine, and rental cars there cost half what they do at SFO. The city is like a lot of cities, parts are OK; others are not. I wouldn't have any qualms about going to, say, Jack London Square or the Paramount Theater by myself at night, but other parts I'd not want to go to even in broad daylight.

    I was pretty much told to avoid East Palo Alto - apparently not even cabs would pick you up there.

    Yeah, pretty much. The fairly new IKEA/Home Depot shopping center and some nice-looking office buildings along the PA border are OK, I guess, as is driving straight down University Avenue to get to the Dumbarton Bridge, but the rest of EPA is not so nice. When I was relocating to CA from WA a few months ago and looking for a place to stay temporarily, I found a place on Air B'n'B that looked nice and cost less than half of anything else I could find, but EPA has a reputation, so I drove around the neighborhood first. Um, no, I don't think so.



  • @HardwareGeek said in Orbitz WTF:

    The fairly new IKEA/Home Depot shopping center and some nice-looking office buildings along the PA border are OK, I guess,

    Fun (and useless) fact: I biked from Palo Alto to the IKEA once, only to discover that there are no entrances directly from the street. I ended up locking my bike to the fence that surrounds the IKEA and taking a pair of dodgy and otherwise unused stairs (fire escape for the parking? alas, they were not locked) to the roof-parking and entering from there.


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