Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

Tech glitches happen to the best of web businesses. The key is always having a plan B so your customers can still do business with you.

I like Hotwire. Since they’re all about the web biz - I’ve (usually) found the travel site easy to use, fast and economical.

So, I was puzzled last week when I went to their site and saw “Sorry, we’re doing maintenance.” I wasn’t in any great hurry so I waited for a few days - but wonder how many people didn’t?

Yesterday, I decided I’d better get serious about my 50th birthday trip to New Orleans next month - so back I go to Hotwire. Great! The first choice of hotel/air package fit the bill. But, I wanted a different set of flight options. Nope. We’re not going there. I kept getting “We cannot process your request…It may be because you have multiple browser windows open.” (I didn’t.) Then they give me the “continue” button…which took me back to the starting point. That’s not continuing.

I tried refreshing, restarting and using two different browsers. I could get a little further in Safari than Firefox - and - oh, wait a minute! I got to the next screen…no, oops, “Sorry, we can’t process…”

I abandoned Hotwire and went to both Travelocity and Expedia. However, neither had quite a good a deal - and I’ve sworn to never fly AA again (at least not as a paying customer) so several options were out.

I go back to Hotwire and give it another go. By this time, I’m hoping Mr. Server has gotten over his glitch. Nope. So, I hunt for the customer service number and call them. (By now, I’m in full “on a mission from God” mode.)

To make a long story short - and to Hotwire’s credit, I got to a live person almost immediately. The nice lady got me booked on our first choice and a confirmation email landed in my mailbox while we were still on the phone.

Here’s what Hotwire should do: Have the 800 reservations number on all error pages. Absolutely positively have to be down for maintenance? Post something like, “As with all web sites, sometimes we’ve got to refresh and retool. And we can give you friendly, fast service at …..”

The main reason I persevered in giving Hotwire my business is that I refuse to fly AA. But, if I were Hotwire, I wouldn’t base my biz success on unhappy AA flyers (granted, there’s a growing number of us, but…)

P.S. Here’s a little math for AA.
Two round-trip tickets, Albuquerque to New Orleans: $508.00 (lowest average fare)
Baggage Fee: $50.00 (that they insisted on charging and keeping for my “overweight” luggage coming off an international flight.)
Net Loss: $458.00 (So far. I’m going to Chicago in May and we’re planning some more weekend trips this year.)

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Tags: emarketing, marketing, marketing troubleshooting, customer service, American Airlines, American Airlines problems, American Airlines customer service, Hotwire, Hotwire problems