Money stuck in limbo and no ticket confirmation

Last month trying to purchase a complicated and rather expensive trip to Europe I got caught in one of those "You need to call your bank" VS. "You need to call orbitz" death matches. Two times in a row and about a week apart each, I tried to purchase something on orbitz and the transaction would fail on their end... but oh man did it go through on my banks end. Essentially the money was stuck in a pending transaction that my bank could not cancel. Orbitz saw no record of it on their end and claimed they couldnt do anything about it. Finally after speaking to 3 different people I was able to get a manager to call my bank and she quickly sorted the situation out. Why this took an orbitz manager, multiple days and multiple hours of my time is beyond me. Serious bug in their system.