Beware of Expedia…

I’ve been traveling way too much lately and I often use Expedia for my airline reservations. After my experience with them this week I’m abandoning them and switching to Orbitz. Why?…

I made reservations for one flight and subsequently had to make a change to the return flight. I knew there would be a penalty and was totally fine having to pay it. Once I made this change, Expedia showed my final total was $542.60, or $286 more than the original fare. They also made it clear that my credit card would be charged $542.60, nothing more, nothing less. Sounds right to me…then my AMEX bill shows up. Now there’s an additional $105 for the trip, with no explanation. I re-checked my itinerary on Expedia and it still shows $542.60 with no indication whatsoever of any further charges pending.

I called them about it and was told “it’s our policy to add on the $105 fee and it doesn’t show up on your receipt” Huh?! Rather than saying “oops, we forgot to put that $105 fee on your receipt, we apologize and will get it corrected today”, here’s what I got:

I will report this to our billing department and they’ll send you an e-mail with the details of the charges within 72 hours.

72 hours?! Can’t a business built around online reservations manage to send me a detailed summary e-mail that same day?

Wow. That was an eye-opener. Again, I have no problem paying whatever fees are involved in the switch, but it’s sloppy bookkeeping and receipt generation on Expedia’s part to hide this sort of thing till the credit card statement arrives.

Orbitz, here I come!

Comments

[Joe Wikert]

Update: As a follow-up, I have to note that Expedia's customer service sent me an e-mail apology and offered me a $100 voucher for a hotel on an upcoming trip. I thanked them for the note and the offer but also told them to keep the voucher for someone else since I’m finished with Expedia. If you use them for business travel be careful when making changes – you won’t discover the additional fees until your credit card shows up, probably long after you’ve submitted your expense report.

[John]

I also had a horrible experience with EXPEDIA. I decided to run a website (http://www.victimsofexpedia.com) to alert as many people as I can. Later I found that EXPEDIA is listed in the top ripoff link at the bad business bureau ( http://www.ripoffreport.com ) and has another "dedicated" websites due to poor customer support and lies: http://www.shameonexpedia.com

Kind regards

[Joe Wikert]

John, thanks for weighing in and for the info on your sites. I just visited victimsofexpedia.com and added my experience to the many, many others you've already got documented. I'm glad to see there's no www.victimsoforbitz.com since I'm moving all my travel planning to Orbitz.

[Jen Webb]

Joe, be careful of orbitz also. I have used Orbitz for many years and in June had a similar problem with them - it took 5 phone calls, 2 emails and lots of angry comments over 4 days to get them to give me a usable receipt for a change-fare fee. Painful!

[John]

For some information about Orbitz visit: http://www.shameonorbitz.com .

[Dick Kusleika]

Joe, I'd like to invite you back to the stone age. Back to a time when someone else booked travel for you. After years of booking my own travel, I've gone back to a human travel agent. This time, of course, I have to foot the bill instead of the airline. All I wanted was to get from Omaha to LAX and back to watch a little football. I spent 3 hours researching flight times and fares to end up disappointed that I couldn't get anything for less than $500. Then I thought: Why do I pay someone to mow my grass but I won't pay someone to book my travel. I called an agent and spent 10 minutes to get a $450 fare (I don't know how long she spent looking for it and I don't care). I had to pay her $35 for her trouble and I decided that I will *never* book my own travel again. The old is new again.

[Joe Wikert]

Hi Dick. Great point. Actually, our company has a travel agent we can use, and I usually did until recently. What I found was that I was often able to either get a better fare or a better flight option if I used Expedia. Given how easy it is to use, I also found it to be as fast as laying out my plans for someone else.

Earlier this week I had to make plans for an upcoming trip to the east coast. Well, I have to admit I used Expedia...but only to determine what options were available. As soon as I reviewed their search results I went directly to the airlines website and booked the flights directly. Heck, I even saved the $5 service fee Expedia charges!

victimsofexpedia.com is some crazy obsessed man who lost his tickets and expect Expedia to pay for them. shameonorbitz.com & shameonexpedia.com are related to a bad hotel that actually scammed not only the customers, but the websites hosting their inventory.

I would hardly call any of these sites evidence that either are fraudsters, bad or evil as the victims author seems to think.

Joe, you are on to something with your search method. It is the trend in the online travel industry. If you want to access the most online fare info without all of the steps (retail to supplier search and compare) you can use sites like sidestep.com or kayak.com. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if you saw a google product that did this type of consolidated fare search in the near future...

[John]

Hey. The guy from victimsofexpedia didn't loss his ticket. EXPEDIA failed to deliver it (twice) and then failed to give information to the airline to arrange the trip. So, he didn't have a chance to use the ticket EXPEDIA charged in his credit card. Later, Expedia tried to keep that money for that ticket they failed to provide: that is simply fraud. Obsessive? neah, just helping other travelers.
Regards

[LISA]

There has to be some sort of recourse that customers can take for the aggravation and lack of any customer service that expedia offers. I have literally been on the phone with expedia since 9:00am yesterday to 9:00pm last night and again this morning and am no further in my pursuit to rebook a flight that I paid over $2,000 for! I conveniently get disconnected and have to dial the 800 number and go through my scenario over and over again! Bottom line, expedia never processed the $2,000 credit with the airline. I am currently awaiting a call from expedia. I won't hold my breath though. They have been anything but expeditious in handling a simple flight arrangement.

[John]

LISA: "I conveniently get disconnected and have to dial the 800 number and go through my scenario over and over again!". They do that, It happen to me too!!! It is amazing the lots of tricks EXPEDIA use to scam people
any news from EXPEDIA? Could you finally fly? Keep us updated

[John Earnhardt]

I am attempting to use a flight credit from an Expedia.com from a flight that I was unable to use earlier this year. All of their people have been very nice (actually not all), but the system they have set up for flight credits is specifically designed to frustrate and anger customers. I cannot think of another reason for my treatment. I think I am supposed to give up and say forget about my $475 flight credit because it is not worth the pain. That is my honest assessment of how I have been treated in the numerous calls I have made to Expedia.com over the past week.

Call 1 - She could not book my flight. Her system was down. Call back in an hour. This, of course, was after a 10 minute wait and then 15 minutes with her. "Call back in an hour." She assigned me a case ID #, which is: 361 971 04.
Call 2 - Got to the first person, who checked my details to transfer me to customer service because the first person could not process a flight credit. Two people instead of one makes great business sense and is great for your customers to have to go through a gauntlet to get the help they need. The sound quality was so poor when I got to customer service that they could not hear me and I could not hear them. Again, ingenious, if you want your customer to hang up and never call back. I asked for a number to call them at (they could not give me direct number), I offered to give my number (they said they could not call directly). They ended up transferring me back to expedia.com main number where the sound quality was still so degraded that I had to call back.
Call 3 - Same process as before. First call was great quality and then when tranferred to "customer service" to try to use my flight credit the quality was horrible. I asked for an alternate number and they gave me 404 area code number, which, of course, goes to the same original 800 number, which I found out with:
Call 4 - I called 404 number and, again, the first call was great quality and when I got through to the customer service number the sound quality was so degraded that JoJo said she was shouting to be heard and that I would have to shout as well. We finally got to the flight that I wanted and she, of course, could not book it. She said I would have to deal with the airline (Delta) directly that she would call me back. (See, Call #2 where I was told that they could not call me back directly at this point).
Call 5 - They called me back. Hurray! She explained that the $50 change fee and difference in flight cost that I had repeatedly been told I would be responsible for would also have an additional $20 "processing" fee (which just came out of the blue I guess). She said I would have to pay Delta directly which I said I would do. She then asked for my credit card. I asked if I was going to talk and pay to Delta directly then why did she, an Expedia employee, need my credit card information. She said she would transfer me to Delta and put me on hold. She came back on the line and said she was still trying to transfer me and that Delta was waiting for me. I was then, of course, disconnected.
Call 6 - I'm on hold. They would not transfer me back to JoJo. They insisted on my e-mail address. Again. I explained that I had a Case ID and had just been cut off from JoJo and could they please help me and transfer me to JoJo. Still on hold. This was a man and he was the least helpful of all the least helpful. All the agents had been nice, but unhelpful. He was not nice. Time of call was 10:40PM PT on September 13th if you want to see who this was. Still on hold. Got to customer service. Very poor voice quality. She would not transfer me to JoJo and wanted to go over everything again. Which we did. Painfully. She cannot book it for me. She is getting a system error. This, even though, of course, I could book it online at expedia.com while she and I are speaking. For $490.00 of course. She is going to transfer me to Delta. It is now 11:03PM. She is going to transfer me to Paul at Delta. The sound quality from the transfer is so poor that I'm not even sure there is a person on the other end of the line. I can barely hear someone trying to talk. I recite my phone number loudly...several times. Please call me back. Please. Click. They hung up. Expedia's degradation of voice quality to customer service wins again.
Call 7 - I call Delta Airlines directly. Within 10 minutes my flight is booked. With full credit applied. Pedro Maciel is my hero. Very helpful. Very friendly. Great voice quality. I suggested that he stop using Expedia as a partner. "That's a corporate decision," he said. Helpful and diplomatic.
Calls 8 through 1000 - Call everybody I know (and e-mail all travel blogs) and tell them not to use Expedia.

[John]

DO NOT USE EXPEDIA...I recentely had the worst travel and customer service experience I have had in my life with them. First I called to change my departing flight from Sunday April 27th to Friday May 2nd. The incompenent agent read everything back properly yet booked the flight for Friday April 25th. I did not catch this until I went to check in online the night before the flight. In trying to get this settled and have the flight change corrected, they first had me on hold for over an hour and would not admit that their error almost cost me my flight. Then I was told to contact Continental Airlines to rebook a flight and they would reimburse me for up to $200 of the rebooking fees. First, as this was a complete error on their behalf I would expect that they would correct the issue themselves. So I end up rebooking a flight through continental, who has a great customer service department by the way, and it cost an additional $250. Fine, that is do able. However, upon trying to obtain the refund that I was promised I was put on hold for 2 hours before anybody would even pick up the phone to talk to me. All I needed was for the refund to go the cc that was used when making the changes and not the card that was used to orignially book the flight. Sounds simple right? Not for the incompetent, ignorant and useless expedia customer service agents. I will never use expedia again and I urge you to heed my warning.

[Brian]

I have had to say that Expedia by far and away, has the worst customer service of all the travel sites. I travel quite frequently have to say that I will never use Expedia again. I recently booked a trip from NY to Bali, Indonesia and then on to Bangkok and back to NY. I receive an email message from Expedia stating something has been changed on my trip and that they have tried to call me. Since I never ever received such a call, I contacted them. After an hour and half-mostly on hold-it seemed that one of my connection flights had been canceled but they were going to put me on another flight. The problem was they put me on another flight that left from an airport 600 miles from where I was. When I asked how was I suppose to get there, they didn't know. They said they would call the airline and find out, could I wait on hold. I wait on hold for 1 hour and the person comes back only to tell me that I would have to call back because the other airline was closed. It took an hour on hold to figure this out. I call back and go through this same scenario five more times. When I ask to speak to a supervisor, on my fifth call, they put me on hold for almost 2 hours only for the supervisor Gella Planto to tell me I would have to call back when the other airline is open so they could help me. When I asked how come they couldn't call me back when they found out the answers she said we don't do that. I then asked why every service representative asked me for my number so they could call me back, she stated they were doing it to make me feel better and avoid customer complaints. I will have to take this into my own hands but at the very least try to warn others from using expedia...they are useless.

[Jill]

I will not use expedia again. I have used travelocity in the past and will stick with it. Expedia, definately is a con. I was making a change to my travel arrangement, I needed to change a hotel reservation from 5 night to four, and it was 5 days in advance of the change. They said if I did it would be a penalty charge, and the service person actually put me on hold and pretended to call the hotel. I knew that no hotel would charge a penalty 5 days out. so I called them they were so shocked. no one had called. so... beware expedia. the are liars and cheats. Travelocity just got a loyal customer in me!!

[Carol]

After my recent Expedia fiasco, I will be joining the Orbitz travelers once again. Who knew that you pay one price for the ticket and when you are completely finished and try to request a seat assignment a subsequent charge is added to do that? SORRY! That should have been part of the ticket price that I paid in the first place! Not a good experience for the first and only time I will ever use expedia.com!

[Nandita]

I have also just had my worst travel and customer service experience with Expedia.

I phoned Expedia to have a refund for the taxes I paid on a flight I canceled. I was told to call the airline carrier (BMI). I called BMI and they told me that only Expedia can issue refunds on taxes.

By the way, companies cannot collect on taxes they collect on canceled flights.

Expedia told me the only way I could get a credit for the taxes I paid was to *call the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)*???!!!

Right, Expedia wants me to call the IRS to get a refund for a ticket I booked with Expedia???!!!

The customer service supervisor I spoke with was less than helpful. He just kept trying to read the Expedia rules on refunds to me (which had nothing to do with taxes)!

I will never, ever use Expedia again.

They now have $74 of my money that they collected as "taxes" that they will not pay to the IRS as taxes because no service was actually provided.

Is this one of their profit making strategies? If so, it has backfired as I won't use them again.