Having been promised – in an online way, albeit – that the seats were once again reserved, only to find they weren’t, I wound up calling Orbitz while we were traveling to dinner. After the usual but still annoying 10 minute wait to get a customer service rep on the phone that most likely uses the exact same web interface customers use to assist, a surprisingly American (and southern sounding) woman took my call. After explaining the situation, she attempted unsuccessfully to lock in any seat changes, the said, “Hold on. I am going to try something else.”

Once she returned to the phone to inform me it didn’t work, I asked her to recall my itinerary to tell me what we had. What came next was shock and horror: not just on the other end of the line but on mine as well. “Did you just cancel your flights, sir?” I responded, “How could I? I am in the car, on the phone with you.”

A healthy pause followed, and several passive-aggresive urges hit me all at once. “I have no idea what happened, but someone has canceled your reservations. I am going to need to forward you to a supervisor.” Knowing there were no more than two or three remaining seats on all our flights to begin, and feeling pretty confident that the customer service agent and flight cancelation specialist were one in the same, I reluctantly held the line.

Quick theory: if you’re in this business and occasionally commit such a strong party foul, wouldn’t it be a good idea to make sure there are “holy crap” supervisors just waiting by the red phone to take the call? Here we are, hours from our flight, and I am flopping over mountains with a mobile phone that has a 50/50 shot at even surviving the call. Wait time to talk to the supervisor with zero flights: 10 minutes.

Claudia (Employee ID MAU – by the way, how do you get a three letter code for an employee ID? Can you imagine Bob Segar singing the song “Feel Like A Bunch of Letters”?) was our supervisor agent, and in the customary practice of companies everywhere, apologized for the situation without taking any responsible on behalf of Orbitz for the relative terror thrown our way. Reminds me of Eliot Spitzer resigning… sorry you’ve been let down, now I am going to resign and return to private life for doing nothing that I plan to discuss outside my apartment.

After Claudia told us she was going to handle the situation with literally no specifics, I asked for her name and ID one last time, thinking I could trust that there was an understanding between us regarding the severity of having no tickets the night before a major vacation. As far as her commitment goes, I am convinced there was, but I’m not so sure there’s an understanding regarding the time expectation for representatives in this situation. When someone has lost seats for a flight that begins in 12 hours, they’re thinking 20 minutes is a rough estimate for their remaining non-communicated sanity.

When 40 minutes went by, I called Orbitz back thinking I’d be able transfer right to agent MAU. No such luck, and no way to do that. Wow. Now I’m really blown away. Supervisors handle escalated issues and represent the embodiment of the solution for customers with challenges, and this huge operation doesn’t even get that. This expectation is not excessive: this is how we did it in every customer service environment I’ve been around, whether based on in-person, phone, email, or IM contact.

I did get another supervisor – one that was connected to me via a highly latent tin can / string communications system that sounded like it terminated somewhere in Malaysia. It always makes me chuckle when comms systems are so bad that the callers find themselves waiting 5 seconds to hear the other participant respond. After some on and off chatting with this supervisor, she determined that Claudia was still working the issue and would call me within an hour. I’m sure she was able to figure that out because the sum total of supervisory manpower at Orbitz amounted to three frustrated women sharing a desk and two rotary phones in a cabbage patch somewhere (not intended to offend, rather to point out the ridiculous nature of phonebound customer service here now – of course our sagging dollar will at least give these goofballs a chance to ring their call centers back to America, particularly to Detroit based on newly available workforce).

We finally returned home and I got the call. Though I could barely hear her, Claudia seemed to essentially say that everything Orbitz had lost and I had spent the last three hours attempting to retrieve had in fact been re-reserved. Good thing: when I tried to check alternatives on Kayak, I found one flight out a day and a half later with a 12 hour layover through the night at LAX – grouch material for sure.