March 29th, 2006

Expedia Eats a Little Crow

Honestly, the number of people that give up must be staggering. Who wants to make all those phone calls? And even when you KNOW, you just KNOW you’ve been wronged, if you can’t get the right person to help you, you’re just, well, you’re f*cked. I have endless persistence, a high speed internet connection, and a handy sense of search. That’s how I found the National Geographic Travel Ombudsman who helped me get this resolved. But I’ll bet nine out of ten screwed consumers just give up. Here’s to the other ten percent.

Ms. Nerd’s Eye View

I apologize that there has been a delay in our response to this matter. I would like to assure you that your matter has been looked into and researched fully.

We have received your complaint made to Christopher Elliott, ombudsman for National Geographic, via our Public Relations department. I have personally researched your case and noted that, while our agents did provide you with correct information with regards to the usability of your reservation, they did not recognize that this information was not made clear to you prior to purchase.

After a review of our website and your itinerary, I can see that the fare rules for only one portion of your ticket was displayed; ultimately, the rules indicating that your ticket could not be changed were not made available. For this, I cannot apologize more.

It is never our intent to mislead or miscommunicate to our customers, nor it is our intent to cause such confusion or inconvenience. In light of this, I would like to assist you with making accommodations for your return flight from Vienna to Seattle, at no cost to you.

Administrative stuff here.

So. There. Ha.

posted by pam in consume or consumerr? 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 at 10:27 pm and is filed under consume or consumerr?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Expedia Eats a Little Crow”

  1. John says:

    I also had a horrible experience using EXPEDIA that I decided to run a website to alert travelers about how EXPEDIA cheats customers. EXPEDIA lied to me and tried to keep money for a service that was never provided.
    Please read this: http://www.victimsofexpedia.com

    Good luck travelers

    June 21st, 2006 at 5:03 pm
  2. Vickie Goldman says:

    This is the letter that I JUST sent to Expedia.com informing them of my HORRIBLE experience with them.

    I just have to let you know that this was the FIRST time using Expedia, and it will certainly be the LAST!! I will not only run the Expedia.com name into the ground, I will be informing ALL of my friends, family, co-workers and any random strangers that will listen, to use Travelocity.com instead if they expect to have ANY type of customer service provided to them!!!!
    I would have had a BETTER experience dealing with a third grader then to have dealt with the inexperienced, unhelpful, non-caring, semi-illiterate individuals that YOU call employees!!
    I am SO outraged by the lack of professionalism and blatent lies that I receieved from Expedia, that I will be speaking with The Better Business Bureau about this matter!
    A response to this email would be appreciated, but probably will not be recieved, since it seems that no one at Expedia.com can even UNDERSTAND the English language let alone be able to WRITE it!!!

    July 29th, 2007 at 10:41 am
  3. Jack says:

    I used Expedia to shop for flights from PHX to MSP around Christmas. I found a couple flights that showed good seat selection (i.e. about half the flight was unsold with good selection of aisle seats which is what I wanted).
    I decided to purchase the flight, and as I did so, it was not clear to me how to select seats. So I bought the Northwest flight on Expedia and immediately switched over to the NWA.com site to get my preferred seats.
    MUCH to my surprise, when I got on to the NWA site I found the flight to be virtually sold out. I finally had to select two center seats in different rows for my wife and me.
    I immediately emailed Expedia to ask how their seat map could be dramatically different than the airline’s. I got the typical corporate Pablum about how sorry they were. I fired back three more emails in response (because each elicited the Pablum response that really irritated me), and I asked either for them to get the aisle seats, or refund my money so I could get better flights, or talk to a manager. Pablum, Pablum, Pablum, etc.
    I am done using Expedia, although I have used them a lot over the years. This type of irresponsible, non-responsive behavior is insulting. I am furious!

    October 28th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
  4. Krip Punja says:

    I used Expedia to book a round trip ticket from Orange County, California to Birmingham, Alabama for travel on April 14, 2008. When I showed up at the Delta check-in they could not locate my records and told me there was no record of a ticket purchase although I had paid for it with my credit card. When I called Expedia, I was put on hold for 15 minutes, while I speculated if it I would catch my flight. After spending nearly an hour back and forth, Delta obtained my records from Continental which had my return tickets. Expedia was not much help in resolving this issue, as the operator while trying to be helpful was not well trained enough to handle the situation. I was lucky I had showed up 2 hours early.
    My e-mail complaint to Expedia solicited the unintelligent response that my ticket was confirmed. I am not going to trust Expedia with my airline bookings again!

    April 30th, 2008 at 10:05 am
  5. john says:

    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.

    May 9th, 2008 at 11:48 am
  6. john carr says:

    Booked and paid for 2 US Airways flights Acapulco - Las Vegas. 2 days later flights cancelled and alternatives offered by Expedia - I agreed to these but then US Airways said all they would offer was a full refund
    Spent hours trying to sort refund today - cut off by Expedia after 1hr. 5mins - called again and promised email within 10 mins - 4 hours later no reply but did I really expect one?
    Never again.How long will they keep my $2000?

    May 12th, 2008 at 2:53 pm

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