t’s a compelling storyline: Starry-eyed couple books $2,000 honeymoon on Expedia to St. Petersburg, Russia, and winds up stranded in Frankfurt after their Expedia agent assures them they don’t need visas to Russia. (They do, though their luggage goes on without them).
Considerable angst and outlay of euros later, an unrepentent Expedia offers the newlyweds — a writer and a computer programmer who’d been unemployed until a few weeks ago — nothing more than a $100 hotel credit.
Cue the keyboards: The author unleashes her frustration in her blog, which her followers quickly relay via Twitter and Facebook messages asking for phone calls and e-mails to Expedia on her behalf. Then, less than a day after her Frankfurt debacle begins to play out in cyberspace, the sad saga gets a fairytale ending.
A sympathetic Expedia agent goes to bat for them, and the online agency admits its error, offers a full refund, picks up the tab for expedited visas and other costs, and throws in a jaw-dropping $3,000 credit for future travel.
That’s just what happened to Bethany Thomas, a 30-year-old fantasy writer from Peaks Island, Maine, whose pen name is Catherynne M. Valente, and her 31-year-old husband Dmitri Zagidulin, a Ukraine-born programmer she met online. Their travel experience and its happy aftermath, she said Friday, serve as “a huge triumph for social networking. Without it, we’d still be stranded in Frankfurt with a $100 voucher.”
The couple’s drama began Tuesday, Nov. 3, when they arrived in Frankfurt and couldn’t board their St. Petersburg flight without visas, despite being told by an Expedia agent that they weren’t required.
Their bad luck escalated: Expedia told them they had no record of the visa conversation, and the company’s offer of a $100 hotel voucher covered only a third of the actual cost. The Russian consulate was closed because of a holiday. As Thomas wrote in her blog, Rules for Anchorites, “This is getting to levels of awful I can’t even describe.”
At the same time, however, Thomas’ supporters were peppering cyberspace with outraged appeals to Expedia. And by Thursday morning, wrote Thomas, “Expedia, to their absolute credit, e-mailed us and admitted wholeheartedly that their agent was at fault. They’ll be refunding our trip and offered us a credit toward future travel. That’s more than we ever expected, and they really did go out of their way to make it right.”
Expedia spokesman Adam Anderson says Thomas and Zagidulin should have been directed to the U.S. State Department’s website, and their agent “acted contrary to our policy, practice and training. Obviously the agent was trying to help, but unfortunately got it wrong.”
Anderson says the company re-examined its response after an employee read Thomas’ blog and alerted the customer service department. “We’ll use this particular case to look for ways we can improve the system moving forward.”
Adds Expedia customer service senior director Thomas Seibert: “Social media played an important role in alerting us to our error.”
It’s not the only travel company that has been prompted to make amends by the power of social media. Earlier this year, after baggage handlers at United Airlines broke his guitar and United refused to pay for the $1,200 repair, Canadian singer Dave Carroll fought back with a music video titled United Breaks Guitars that has been viewed more than 5.5 million times. United now uses the incident in training baggage handlers and customer-service representatives — and made more news by losing Carroll’s luggage on a recent flight from Saskatchewan to Denver.
Thomas, now happily admiring sherbet-colored buildings in the city that served as the setting for her newest book, says she’s “astonished by the speed and volume” of the response to her plight.
“The events of the past two days have been embarrassing and heartbreaking but also humbling and heart-lifting. You should all be proud of yourselves,” she wrote. And, she adds, she promises to double and triple-check visa issues on her next trip: “We’ve had an object lesson and won’t forget it. I hope this helps others not to make the same mistake.”
By Laura Bly, USA TODAY
Please check http://www.rctccorp.com/visa/visa_russia.html for visas to Russia
Share on Facebook
