I will never use Opodo again.
Their continued feet dragging to ensure that I can’t cancel my trip is perfect demonstration of the destructive nature of profit-driven capitalism.
Underpaid support agents that are trained in methods to prevent customers from canceling their trips and getting their money refunded. While middle managers slap themselves on the backs for finding yet another method for “hitting their numbers” at the expense of frustrated customers.
Why are flights and trips not treated like any other product I purchase at a store? I purchase, I don’t like, I bring back and get my money back. No questions asked. Travel seems to be a special kind of magic product that can’t be handled in that same way. Why? Since this is capitalism, the answer is pretty straight forward: profit and greed.
“When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money” - Obomsawin
So continuing my frustrating issues with opodo. They are truly cynical and disrespecting to customers.
Having threatened their support team with dragging them to the court of social media, they finally cancelled my trip. It’s ironic (and fun to observe) how large companies aren’t afraid to destroy the lives of individuals but fear the wrath of the masses.
Either way, in their everlasting and never-ceasing greed, they refunded me a total of 8 Euros on a 3000 Euro trip. Claiming that the airline (Qatar) had such high cancellation costs.
Unfortunately that is not true. Qatars support was brilliant in helping me to cancel my check-in since opodo won’t cancel my trip since I was checked in. So I had to call the airline to cancel that. While talking to their support, they told me that, at the moment due to covid, they have no cancellation fees.
So opodo lies me in the face. Claiming that the airline has such high cancellation fees.
But at least I did something useful with my 8 Euro refund, I bought a new domain: www.nopodo.net
Thanks opodo for that.
Turns out I’m not the only one who has had a bad experience with Opodo, from Wikipedia
As of 2022, Opodo.com and opodo.co.uk have a “poor” rating of 2.7 stars out 5 on the online review platform Trustpilot, and a rating of 1.1 out of 5 on the review platform Reviewcentre.
Ironically if you go to Trustpilot today, Opodo has a rating of 3.0 however going back to Wikipedia, it seems that Trustpilot allows companies to fake their ratings:
Trustpilot allows businesses to pay them to access its marketing services and use Trustpilot technology to filter reviews—normally selecting only favourable posts—that customers place on their own Web site or other places. This may violate certain laws or regulations.
So it seems that opodo is doing it’s best to gun the system to improve their rating on Trustpilot. Good job getting 0.3 “stars” added to the rating - in six months.
Wikipedia has quite a bit to say about Opodo:
The UK consumer association “Which?” recommends members not to use Opodo. The majority of customer complaints focus on a serious lack of responsiveness from the Opodo customer care team, for instance not receiving a reply to an email in over a month, for them being “unreachable by phone,”.
I can only confirm this but good to know I’m not the only one they seem to treat disrespectfully.
It’s just a pity that they don’t seem to care about poor ratings or poor customer relations. As I pointed in my previous post, they only react if threatened with the court of social media.
If you are going to use opodo (perhaps because you had a lapse of sanity) then always include an insurance policy. At least that is what I thought.
Turns out that Europ Assistance - the insurer of opodo - is just as shady as opodo.
First off, their original Wikipedia entry was deleted in 2020 because it was basically just company advertising. No one has bothered to put up a new article. Why? It would be just as critical as the opodo page so you might as well just read that.
Second off, they have the same level of customer service and experience as opodo. They have the same delaying tactics. The same non responsiveness and the same pigheaded (which is really an insult to all pigs) bullshit that opodo has displayed.
After booking my flights, my mother died. Which you might think an opodo or europ assistance would respect. Not these wannabe multi-national corporations. They don’t give a flying sexual-intercourse about it. If they could apply extra charges for having parents die on you, they would.
In fact, they are colder than the corpse of my mother. Thankfully she doesn’t have to bare the coldness of this world any longer. RIP Mum.
So what happened was that I filled out the europ assistance claim form and supply them with all they wanted for the claim - death certificate, proof of purchase, proof of cancellation and proof of relation (after all, who knows whether I’m related to my mother - who raised me, who taught me to respect others and be a nice person, who made me to whom I have become).
Anyway, I waited a week until a response came. And that was after sending them a daily request for an update. And what was the response?
Provide us with a hospital report.
WTF? What for? I replied as much and began wondering what is wrong with these people.
Until I tried to get a hospital report. In Australia you need to make a freedom of information request to get that report.
Those bastards know that and make you jump through those extra hops just to fuck you over.
That’s probably why they took so long to respond - they were figuring out what was the most problematic document to obtain in Australia related to death. And then they would request that document from the claimer.
Rememnber, the original set of documents requested to place the claim and the claim was death of relative, did not include a hospital report. They probably check individual claims, in individual parts of the world, and ensure that for each country they request the most difficult document to obtain.
What a bunch of a-holes. It just goes to show that not only are black holes at the centre of our universe, they are also at the centre of our insurance industry.
Have also had a bad experiences with opodo? Send us your experience.
P.S. opodo marketing department don’t both sending fake positive customer experiences.