Expedia - A Warning!!!

[DibbleDooDah]

I have posted previously about the perils of booking with Expedia but just wanted to highlight that people should check, double check and triple check EVERYTHING and take screenshots.

In January this year BA cancelled one of my flights for this August and booked me onto the next one. Absolutely not a problem, plenty of notice and the times actually work better for me.

Both Expedia and BA messaged me of the change with Expedia sending me an email with a “click here to confirm the changes” button. This then took me to a screen which said basically you don’t need to do anything else and we’ll take it from here. Thank goodness I screenshot this!!!

Turns out that five months later they still hadn’t ticketed these new flights!!!!!!! The plane was almost full so if I hadn’t queried with BA why I couldn’t use the Manage My Booking then most likely I wouldn’t have actually known and we wouldn’t have actually had seats on the plane!!!!

Expedia put it all on me saying I hadn’t responded but I was able to show them the screenshot that I had back in January. They quickly backtracked and blamed “system issues”.

So beware - or even better don’t use them at all.

We had similar issues when we had a ticket that was changed but the new ticket booking wasn't completed.
They told us it was and the app was updated but the booking wasn't put through to the airline.
So when we went to check in online with the airline we didn't exist.
Fortunately we had a clear email trail with all the details.
But it took us 13 hours on the phone to sort out. No one could authorize buying the tickets we needed, they kept trying to buy a different class of tickets because the costs had gone up. Of course they had!
It was an awful experience I would avoid and we had used them for years.
Mistakes happen but 13 hours on the phone was farcical.

Expedia is a disaster if something goes wrong, impossible to get hold of anyone on the phone. Caused so much stress, I will never use them again 😪

Expedia sounds like a scam.

I'm just curious as to why if you had posted issues before you used them again?

I'd never used them, heard so many issues!

I’ve had nothing but good experiences with Expedia and I’ve booked a few long haul trips, both flight and hotel packages. 🤷‍♀️ Had worse experiences booking direct through airlines.

Expedia is absolutely fine. I almost always use either them or Booking and often hotels will actually be cheaper on there than booking direct.

The one thing I'd never book with a 3rd party agent is a flight. The prices don't change (unlike hotels, which can be more expensive or cheaper depending, so it's always best to shop around- and obviously if it's a chain, book direct with them) and if something goes wrong, then you're dealing with two lots of customer service. Expedia + flight company.

As this poster's flight is with BA, I'd bet my bottom dollar that the problem lies with them and not Expedia. I refused even to look at BA after their shoddy customer service (not the flights, not the people at the airport or on the planes, but the people on the phone and selling the tickets)

We had no problems with Expedia, especially cancellations due to COVID, booking direct with easy jet was a different story and we lost £600

Totally fine, until you have an issue I found. Mine was a name error so it wasn't the same as the passport, an absolute nightmare, mostly as I would be on the phone for hours then the line would get cut off (it felt like it was being done on purpose)

I use Expedia's business travel arm for work, they are shockingly bad. Considering they are owned by Amex the mistakes they make, the charges they make eg train strikes are on, train companies are offering refunds as you can't travel. Experts are still charging an admin fee
Can't wait to get rid of them at work

I had the same problem as you OP but booked directly through BA. Flights retiring from Saigon last year, email saying that BA had to shift us to another flight, click here, you don't have to do anything else, even got a new flight confirmation email and reference number, plus assigned seats, everything. No money arrived back in our account or was taken out.

Couldn't check in online but fine, that sometimes happens with kids. Get to the airport to find that BA hadn't actually got us tickets on the new flight. We had a reference number, confirmation emails, even seats but no e-ticket had been issued!

And to top it all off, Saigon airport only takes cash so we couldn't even just buy new tickets at the customer service desk. Luckily it was a code share with Qatar so DH called Qatar, I called BA, and he managed to get us on the flight in time paying over the phone for new tickets. We still can't figure out what happened.

The issues relate to the same booking. Business class flights booked for trip in covid times that was cancelled. We travel a lot so we’re happy to take the vouchers as we knew we’d use them. The vouchers were issued to Expedia.

Trying to use these vouchers turned into an absolute farce. It took 19 hours on the phone over various days to actually rebook anything. They originally denied all knowledge of the vouchers. it was only when I threatened legal action that all of a sudden I could book something. That then took another 5 hours.

The problem was DEFINITELY on the Expedia side. I have a friend who works for BA and they confirmed that Expedia hadn’t reticketed the cancelled flights on the return leg.

To be fair, the last Expedia agent I spoke to was on the ball and it was all sorted out within half an hour. I did gush to him about how he was the best Expedia agent I have dealt with and thanked him profusely.

Yes - the cutting off does feel deliberate. Then when you phone back there’s absolutely no history of what you spent the last hour going through with the previous agent and have to start from scratch.

@DibbleDooDah ohhh apologies I didn't realise that...thank god you're sorted tho! My last cheapy break was with Love Holidays. Not a single issue and it was perfect. When I returned I saw so many horror stories! I must have been lucky...

We also had a nightmare with Expedia last year.
Was trying to book a hotel for a couple of nights. Had found a newish hotel that I really liked the look of, but no rooms available, so chose somewhere else nearby.
Definitely went through all the booking pages but unfortunately I'd closed the confirmation screen page. Realised the next day that hadn't had a confirmation email from Expedia, so phoned to make sure all was ok. Was assured that there was no booking whatsoever on my account, so thought I must have made a mistake and not finalised the booking.
I then checked the website of the hotel I'd originally wanted to go to and there was now 1 room available, so booked that. All good, until that hotel contacted us to say there'd been a mistake and they were closed for a private function (they were actually fantastic and ended up putting us in a sister hotel).
Few months later and as we're checking into that hotel I have some missed calls from an international number, which I'm clearly not going to call back. Then later I check my emails and find that the hotel that I had tried to book with Expedia is contacting us saying that since we have not shown up and not cancelled in time, we are going to be charged in full for our booking.
Many phone calls with Expedia (and experiencing the "accidental" cutting off many others have had) to be finally told we have to take it up with our credit card company to get refunded.
Incidentally, Expedia denied that I had ever queried the booking in the first place, however I received an email at the time, asking me to review the service I'd received contacting customer services! 🤔😂

We were also cut off. The service center we were directed to seemed unable to deal with complex issues so when someone got overwhelmed they just hung up . This happened several times.

We had used them without issues in the past but they were obviously not capable of sorting out a problem when it arose.

We were passed around for hours between different departments. It took a couple of days to get to someone senior enough to actually authorize the buying of new tickets.

We also had to end up threatening legal action which we were starting to seriously look at.

We had a long booked visa appointment with an embassy so really couldn't mess around with days.
We were fine with flying any airline and several different routes to get there.

Staff also lied several times saying at first if we bought the tickets they would refund them. When we asked for a confirmation email of this before we bought them they then had to admit they didn't actually have the authorization to send that because it wasn't certain that they would be refunded.

We had already paid for one set of tickets that hadn't been booked and costs had risen sharply as it was now days before we were due to leave.

It was incredibly stressful.

I'd actually go and have a look at trust pilot. All of Expedia's sites get the lowest rating from thousands of people.
I've found them to be pretty shocking too.