Expedia continues to be evil

I keep finding out how evil Expedia really is. They keep finding ways to lie, spin stories, and do everything they can to refuse to give us a refund. They won't admit to mistakes. They keep blaming the airline and even the bank.

Before I tell you how this story has evolved, here are some horror stories from other people about Expedia:
http://www.geoffdominy.com/expedia_travel.htm  - A musician that had Expedia let him down three times

http://www.marketingshift.com/2005/12/expedia-dot-scam.cfm -  Lots of tossing back and forth between people who have had money stolen by Expedia, and a few people from Expedia, possibly, that come in and call everyone whiners.

Another interesting thing is Wikipedia. According to Wikiscanner, which is a software "watcher" which checks when and where edits are made to Wikipedia, 261 edits have been done for Expedia.com. Many of there involve information about dirty tactics, and were removed or heavily edited from Bellevue, Washington, or more precisely, from Expedia's headquarters. Check it out:
http://katrina.cs.caltech.edu/erenrich_rnd345/scanner_final/company_selection.php?company_name=expedia That means that someone from Expedia actually went to Wikipedia and erased the bad stuff. You know, the truth.

So after spending more countless hours through the month of August including today, Expedia still won't offer a refund. Delta states that they will give us a $358 credit to fly with them, minus a $150 fee. So that makes it $208. That's not good enough, because we have to use the tickets before May, and that still doesn't cover the amount we lost. So we asked for a supervisor through Expedia (since Delta really didn't want to deal with us anymore) and Expedia suddenly offered us a $200 credit after we mentioned we wanted contact information from the corporate office. But there's a catch: We can only use it after we spend money. So combining it with the Delta tickets, we would still have to wind up paying more money, use it within the next 8 months, and then cross our fingers and hope that Expedia actually refunds the money. Fool me once...

But wait, there's more! Expedia now claims that we actually did buy additional tickets through a second account, something completely new to us. Apparently, Tina had signed into a 'Guest' account, entered her information, and bought two more tickets. Of course, Tina was completely unaware of this, while Expedia was apparently fully aware and decided not to tell us. My opinion? After all this trouble, Expedia went in and actually created the account, then updated their computer's information to cover up the mistake. That's a very likely scenario, because not one of the customer support techs could ever see that information, and neither could we until today.

So from the top, here are Expedia's errors: Not cancelling the tickets. Incorrectly telling us that the 2nd pair of tickets were cheaper, they weren't. Not informing us that we had purchased 2 different tickets from one day to the next until it mysteriously popped up in the end. And another new one: incorrectly labeling our daughter's age, turning a baby into a child. Tina went into the information she had originally typed in and it clearly stated the children's correct birth dates. The error was created by Expedia.

Except for the mysterious post at The Consumerist, at no time did Expedia apologize or admit the above errors. What's next? A big corporate email bomb, and we will be emailing the story to over 400 media news sites, radio stations and papers including US, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, France, & Australia. Plus, we are hitting local papers, schools, community events, cork-boards at the supermarket, Facebook, T-shirts, car advertisements, you name it. All saying what Expedia is really like. If I can get just one travel-loving person to not use Expedia after seeing all of this, they would have lost more money then if they just gave me the refund. But I bet it will be more then one person...

Stay classy, Expedia.

Nothing's resolved. BOA still uses fax machines, Expedia still sucks.

Once again, Bank of America reversed the credit, not because they think that that they are always right, I'm sure they do, but because after twice sending them information from Delta and Expedia did they continue losing the fax. I mean, come on. We went directly to the Bank of America branch, and had one of their minions fax it to their offices. Why, oh why, are they still using ancient faxes to depend on some serious customer matter? Have they ever heard of things like, you know, email? Computers? Internet? It's starting to sound like they are doing this on purpose. That's not what you're doing, is it BOA?

Expedia continues to deny that it was their fault.

Oh, and before I forget, I found this site:  http://www.victimsofexpedia.com/EN/index.php
It's messy, but click on  Latest Victim of EXPEDIA to really get a feel as to how pissed off someone has to get, not to mention the amount of work, to get money from Expedia.

Delta sees problem, states it's Expedia's discrepancy

Delta has looked into the matter, and has emailed us back to show that yes, there were only two flights rather then four.
Delta mentions that this is Expedia's "discrepancy", and that the matter must be resolved by them. This has always been true, of course. Now that Delta can see it, this will still need to be forwarded to Expedia, since they have yet to contact us about the matter. Maybe they lost our information to contact us, together with the information that's supposed to show that they were supposed to cancel the tickets over 3 months ago.

Maybe they do this to all their customers after these types of errors, and hopes that the consumer goes away.

The Consumerist gets involved

I wrote to The Consumerist, and they posted the story on their site! Read it at http://con.st/10010055
Right after that, Delta took notice and wrote to us:
"On behalf of Delta Air Lines, I apologize for the problems you encountered with your wife's ticket."
Now, they are working with Bank of America to come up with some kind of solution.
Apparently, Expedia also seemed to take notice:
"So sorry to hear about this awful experience. We are looking into this immediately and are attempting to contact the customer. The Expedia team."  They haven't done anything yet, though.

I noticed in many of the comments over at The Consumerist that some folks didn't quite understand what had occurred, & that it was very confusing. I don't blame them! Much of them thought that we had purchased additional tickets, and were trying to get a refund for the ones we didn't use. That's not it at all. Expedia told us that changing the tickets would be more inexpensive, and that they would take care of the other tickets by removing them. They didn't. Everything that happened after that was just customer service dragging their feet, failing to see the problem. 

We are still waiting for the fix though. I'll let you know what happens.

Thanks to The Consumerist for getting the ball rolling without me having to do an email carpet bomb.

The mistakes continue...

Wow, it's been weeks, and now Bank of America claims that "attempts to resolve the matter with the merchant were unsuccessful".

According to them, Delta Air supplied documents indicating the debit to the account to be a valid charge. A complete lie, because Tina didn't take additional flights. She went to Michigan one time, on July 8th, and came back to Florida, one time, on July 29th in less than a day. Delta also seems to think that my wife is two separate people and took two other flights on the return: both on July 29th at 11:10AM, DROVE BACK TO MICHIGAN ON THE SAME DAY, and then flew back by Delta at 7:40PM, all in a 24 hr. time slot. I kid you not.

Now, Bank of America is reversing the money, plus overdraft fees. They don't see the error in taking two flights, coming and going. That's $538.20, $35, plus another 358.80.

The bank went for information from Delta, even though Expedia was just as involved.

Normal channels like customer service, supervisors, & trips to the bank were tried several times.
Looks like we will need to do an email carpet bomb. Maybe small claims court? Let's ask some experts on the issue and see what they think.

More phone calls, & new math from Delta.

On 7-14, we called Expedia's customer service, but were told to call back because they could not get a hold of Delta. We called again later, and Expedia said they STILL could not get a hold of them. Third time's a charm, and we were placed on hold for an hour for them to get in touch with Delta Airline's customer service. Delta said they would give a credit of $358.80 to fly again with Delta. A credit. To fly with THEM.

Let's run by the math again: We were charged 358.80 for the July 8th flight, however, we were charged 179.40 4 times as well. That means that there was 1076.40 that went between us to Expedia & Delta. We are still owed 717.60. But Delta doesn't see that. They must be doing new math.

We don't want a flight credit that's half of the amount we are owed. We want it all in money.

July 16th- Tina faxed the information to Bank of America.

July 21st- BOA reopened the claim for 538.20 because they had opened a second claim for 179.40. In addition to that claim, they opened another one for the balance of 179.40 to ultimately make it 717.60. Confused yet? They also agreed to refund an NSF charge. I'm sure it hurt them to do so.

Now we are waiting for BOA to contact Delta, which Delta seems to want to dispute. BOA finally saw the error in math, why can't the airline?

Nightmare merry-go-round with BOA,Delta, & Expedia

May 8th, 2010- My wife, Tina, reserves a flight with Delta through Expedia from July 9th to July 29th. However, she finds out later that day that she can get a cheaper flight if she changes the dates to July 8th - July 29th. Just one day different to save a few bucks.

Expedia changes the itinerary to the better date, and say they will refund the money - $538.20. She pays the $358.80 separately for the flight. That's 2 tickets to Michigan for $179.40, one for her, and the other for our 4 year old. So far so good.

May 10th-May 14th: Expedia did not refund the money. She waited patiently. Eventually they charged her for 4 tickets. She called Expedia to put a claim on it, but not before calling Bank of American (BOA) to stop them from dipping into our accounts any further. Who knew how many times Expedia was about to do this? Expedia then placed a claim on it, apparently taking it seriously.

May 15th- Had to call Expedia back to find out what occurred. They refused to give a refund for tickets that didn't exist and will never be used. Doesn't make sense, but there you go. Called BOA to report Expedia's money/ticket concept problem. It's very, very simple: Tickets that don't exist, don't charge us for those. Tickets that do exist: charge us.

May 21st- BOA took it seriously, & credited us for $538.80. So everything was supposed to be peachy. We got the correct tickets which we paid for separately ($358.80), plus BOA would do the legwork in correcting the problem that Expedia couldn't see of giving us the other money back.

July 1st -BOA sends a suspicious letter stating her claim was closed, apparently meaning that the claim was about to be reversed. She calls and is told to go to an local BOA in person.

July 2nd. She goes to a local BOA regarding the letter. The BOA then calls customer service. BOA has to call customer service because no one can figure out why she got the letter. Customer service can't find any claims against the refund, and she was told to disregard the letter. It sounds like a setup for a grand fail, but whatever.

July 8th - Tina goes to Michigan.

July 12th- BOA suddenly finds this 'claim error' they were talking about and reverse the credit they gave us of $538.20. *Sigh*.

BOA states there is nothing they could do and that we should call Delta.

Delta? What does Delta have to do with this?

July 13th- So Tina calls Delta Airlines, and finds out that the July 9th -July 29th flight wasn't canceled. They WANT to take it seriously, but apparently there's nothing they can do about a ticket that didn't exist, was never issued, and was never used. Plus, Delta isn't serious about people's money. Called Expedia.

Expedia states that it's Delta's fault and that we should call them. She calls Delta back and Delta states that it's Expedia's fault. She calls Expedia back, because, you know, she likes being on the phone with businesses that like passing the blame while she's vacationing with her family.

Expedia finally makes a new claim. They state that they attempted to call Delta back several times, but Delta won't answer them. She was advised to call back in an hour. Delta still will not answer Expedia. She calls again and again, up to 5 times until 8:53pm, with no resolution. She's been on the phone for almost 6 hours between Expedia, Delta and BOA.

So what's one to do? Let's see what happens.