Why you should never buy a plane ticket on Expedia...or the cautions if you do.
We have had 2 major adventures with international tickets...unfortunately both with Expedia. Grrr!
The first "adventure" is that we found a deal for our tickets from San Fransisco (SFO) to Sydney, Australia (SYD) (via Vancouver...but heck...it was Business Class so it was not a big tragedy and I had never seen Vancouver before). It was about $300 per ticket cheaper than any other ticket. BUT since we were doing a company international move...things were of course going to be changed/delayed. SO we found ourselves having to move our ticket.
Matthew did most of the work as I was still in Brussels working. It was painful! What he first discovered was that Expedia would not move the ticket. Period. But there was nothing on the Expedia website that said we could not change our tickets. Nothing, anywhere when we bought it. Normally to change a ticket, you expect to pay the change fee and the difference in fare. No problem, we expected this...but NO.
We did not expect what Expedia told us. They said that there was absolutely no way to change the ticket...period. They were helpless, don't you know. Not their fault. We had to call Air Canada. Air Canada said Expedia had to make the change as they had no issues once we paid the change fee. Expedia told us we could not change because of Air Canada. (We elevated to a supervisor level) Air Canada (whose customer support is actually quite good) said it was a totally normal ticket and of course they could change it, they just needed Expedia to do so. So with Air Canada on the line, we were kept on hold for 45 minutes calling back into Expedia and then put on hold. And then hung up on by Expedia.
Eventually we discovered:
- Expedia has a 1h45min timer on your call and the line gets disconnected after that. Yep...so if you don't have someone with your call back number, you go back to the start of the whole thing. We ran into this multiple times in this process and asked corporate and yep...it is true
- Each call center has different hold music (so if you don't like the agent, hang up and try again and if the hold music is different, you may be in luck)
- Every single Expedia rep will try to put you through the exact same script no matter how many times you have already gone through it on the exact same call.
- It takes 3 levels of escalation before you hit corporate for an actual employee of Expedia who actually can change your ticket even thought they tell you they can't.
- The fine fine fine print said that our ticket was non-refundable AND NON CHANGEABLE but it was buried so low that we could not access it in the general agreement policies when we bought the tickets
- Expedia says there are no change fees - well folks I am here to say that they do...but they call it a cancellation fee. They would not change the ticket for us...we were forced to Cancel our ticket and get a refund (minus the cancellation fee)
After 4 hours, 13 minutes of phone time and talking with over half a dozen people we FINALLY found someone we could talk to and do something and we changed our flights. Ugh.
The Final tally:
Elapsed time: 4h13mins on phone.
Escalations: 5
Max Escalation Level Reached: 3
Calls Dropped by Expedia right at 1:45min: 3
Number of transfers to AirCanada: 4
Expedia's "special tickets" are a little too special. Do not ever buy one. You will be stuck with a completely useless ticket if anything changes. In my case I actually had to cancel both tickets and reissue them with the new dates.
I guess I should have learned but I used them again to buy tickets for my parents to come visit. Due to a computer glitch somewhere, only 3 of the 6 letters came out in my dads last name. My mother called about this. After being on hold for extended periods of time with Expedia, they said they could not do anything and she would have to call Air New Zealand (ANZ). Mom called ANZ and they told her she had to talk to Expedia. Calling Expedia back (and being told to call ANZ again), she said that she would stay on hold while they talked to each other. Expedia came back and said that ANZ could not change the name without her buying a new ticket and getting the other one refunded. This would be $300. She was frustrated but agreed.
THEN she was told that neither she NOR HE could get a refund for my dad's ticket becuase I had bought the ticket. WHAT?? So I called.
The rollercoaster started again. Expedia told me I had to talk to the airline. I called ANZ and they told me I had to call Expedia (sound familiar??). Here is the crazy part....ANZ also told me that if it was an ANZ ticket, they could make the change but since one of the flight segments is on United, they could not make the change. I thought this was ridiculous since it was a ANZ ticket on all segments...one of the segments in operated by United but it has a ANZ flight number. Code share partners apparently does not mean anything that can help you. The Star Alliance partnership is a JOKE! Grrr!!!
I call Expedia again and spoke with a very friendly guy named Tom in Manilla (there was a typhoon going on). He tried to help but it turns out but apparently Expedia needed to talk with the ANZ office in the United States and they were not open. Grrr!
He took my number and said they would call back. They did. I was shocked. Unfortuntaly the person still had no power. After an hour on the phone explaining the same thing, they told me that (I know this is a shock) the ANZ desk in the US that handles travel agents was closed and we had to talk with them. Oh...Expedia also said that for an airline like Delta, a 3 letter change is not a problem BUT this was ANZ. Nice! This person also told me that CLEARLY, it was my mistake. Like I don't know how to spell my last name.
I call back AGAIN and explain the whole thing AGAIN...this time I reached a supervisor. I could recite the lines at this point. The difference this time is that she said that she would call me back and she actually did. It was an ungodly hour in the morning, but I did receive a call back. She explained that we were going to separate the 2 tickets on the itinerary. I had to pay the difference for my dad's ticket to the current price. Frustrating! ANZ was blaming this on the United flight. They said that if all the flights were on ANZ, they could add the extra letters to the name. I can tell you that the airline partners are not really partners, there are handshakes that pretend to make traveler's lives more convienanient but only when it suits the airline. I ended up getting out of the deal for under $300 and one more call from Expedia. What and ordeal!!
Here is the other fun thing. We could not pick seats or get info about changes to flight times. We ended up calling United and ANZ directly to take care of these issues.
The even BETTER part was when I went to Expedia to log on while in Sydney. I couldn't. Since I was not in the US, I could not just pull up www.expedia.com and get my itineraries. I had to figure out how to get to the US site to sign in. I finally found the convoluted way to the US website from the Australian one and logged in to my account (with the user name and password I was using before). So Expedia does not even have a working partnership with Expedia. In this modern day and age why would a travel agent site not be normalized across countries??? I was quite concerned and thought I had messed up my password and such. UGH! More silly frustrations with Expedia.
A word of advice. Always try and buy directly from the airline. ANZ is not a friendly. Experiences with Expedia are painful if anything goes wrong.
Grrrr!!
We have had 2 major adventures with international tickets...unfortunately both with Expedia. Grrr!
The first "adventure" is that we found a deal for our tickets from San Fransisco (SFO) to Sydney, Australia (SYD) (via Vancouver...but heck...it was Business Class so it was not a big tragedy and I had never seen Vancouver before). It was about $300 per ticket cheaper than any other ticket. BUT since we were doing a company international move...things were of course going to be changed/delayed. SO we found ourselves having to move our ticket.
Matthew did most of the work as I was still in Brussels working. It was painful! What he first discovered was that Expedia would not move the ticket. Period. But there was nothing on the Expedia website that said we could not change our tickets. Nothing, anywhere when we bought it. Normally to change a ticket, you expect to pay the change fee and the difference in fare. No problem, we expected this...but NO.
We did not expect what Expedia told us. They said that there was absolutely no way to change the ticket...period. They were helpless, don't you know. Not their fault. We had to call Air Canada. Air Canada said Expedia had to make the change as they had no issues once we paid the change fee. Expedia told us we could not change because of Air Canada. (We elevated to a supervisor level) Air Canada (whose customer support is actually quite good) said it was a totally normal ticket and of course they could change it, they just needed Expedia to do so. So with Air Canada on the line, we were kept on hold for 45 minutes calling back into Expedia and then put on hold. And then hung up on by Expedia.
Eventually we discovered:
- Expedia has a 1h45min timer on your call and the line gets disconnected after that. Yep...so if you don't have someone with your call back number, you go back to the start of the whole thing. We ran into this multiple times in this process and asked corporate and yep...it is true
- Each call center has different hold music (so if you don't like the agent, hang up and try again and if the hold music is different, you may be in luck)
- Every single Expedia rep will try to put you through the exact same script no matter how many times you have already gone through it on the exact same call.
- It takes 3 levels of escalation before you hit corporate for an actual employee of Expedia who actually can change your ticket even thought they tell you they can't.
- The fine fine fine print said that our ticket was non-refundable AND NON CHANGEABLE but it was buried so low that we could not access it in the general agreement policies when we bought the tickets
- Expedia says there are no change fees - well folks I am here to say that they do...but they call it a cancellation fee. They would not change the ticket for us...we were forced to Cancel our ticket and get a refund (minus the cancellation fee)
After 4 hours, 13 minutes of phone time and talking with over half a dozen people we FINALLY found someone we could talk to and do something and we changed our flights. Ugh.
The Final tally:
Elapsed time: 4h13mins on phone.
Escalations: 5
Max Escalation Level Reached: 3
Calls Dropped by Expedia right at 1:45min: 3
Number of transfers to AirCanada: 4
Expedia's "special tickets" are a little too special. Do not ever buy one. You will be stuck with a completely useless ticket if anything changes. In my case I actually had to cancel both tickets and reissue them with the new dates.
I guess I should have learned but I used them again to buy tickets for my parents to come visit. Due to a computer glitch somewhere, only 3 of the 6 letters came out in my dads last name. My mother called about this. After being on hold for extended periods of time with Expedia, they said they could not do anything and she would have to call Air New Zealand (ANZ). Mom called ANZ and they told her she had to talk to Expedia. Calling Expedia back (and being told to call ANZ again), she said that she would stay on hold while they talked to each other. Expedia came back and said that ANZ could not change the name without her buying a new ticket and getting the other one refunded. This would be $300. She was frustrated but agreed.
THEN she was told that neither she NOR HE could get a refund for my dad's ticket becuase I had bought the ticket. WHAT?? So I called.
The rollercoaster started again. Expedia told me I had to talk to the airline. I called ANZ and they told me I had to call Expedia (sound familiar??). Here is the crazy part....ANZ also told me that if it was an ANZ ticket, they could make the change but since one of the flight segments is on United, they could not make the change. I thought this was ridiculous since it was a ANZ ticket on all segments...one of the segments in operated by United but it has a ANZ flight number. Code share partners apparently does not mean anything that can help you. The Star Alliance partnership is a JOKE! Grrr!!!
I call Expedia again and spoke with a very friendly guy named Tom in Manilla (there was a typhoon going on). He tried to help but it turns out but apparently Expedia needed to talk with the ANZ office in the United States and they were not open. Grrr!
He took my number and said they would call back. They did. I was shocked. Unfortuntaly the person still had no power. After an hour on the phone explaining the same thing, they told me that (I know this is a shock) the ANZ desk in the US that handles travel agents was closed and we had to talk with them. Oh...Expedia also said that for an airline like Delta, a 3 letter change is not a problem BUT this was ANZ. Nice! This person also told me that CLEARLY, it was my mistake. Like I don't know how to spell my last name.
I call back AGAIN and explain the whole thing AGAIN...this time I reached a supervisor. I could recite the lines at this point. The difference this time is that she said that she would call me back and she actually did. It was an ungodly hour in the morning, but I did receive a call back. She explained that we were going to separate the 2 tickets on the itinerary. I had to pay the difference for my dad's ticket to the current price. Frustrating! ANZ was blaming this on the United flight. They said that if all the flights were on ANZ, they could add the extra letters to the name. I can tell you that the airline partners are not really partners, there are handshakes that pretend to make traveler's lives more convienanient but only when it suits the airline. I ended up getting out of the deal for under $300 and one more call from Expedia. What and ordeal!!
Here is the other fun thing. We could not pick seats or get info about changes to flight times. We ended up calling United and ANZ directly to take care of these issues.
The even BETTER part was when I went to Expedia to log on while in Sydney. I couldn't. Since I was not in the US, I could not just pull up www.expedia.com and get my itineraries. I had to figure out how to get to the US site to sign in. I finally found the convoluted way to the US website from the Australian one and logged in to my account (with the user name and password I was using before). So Expedia does not even have a working partnership with Expedia. In this modern day and age why would a travel agent site not be normalized across countries??? I was quite concerned and thought I had messed up my password and such. UGH! More silly frustrations with Expedia.
A word of advice. Always try and buy directly from the airline. ANZ is not a friendly. Experiences with Expedia are painful if anything goes wrong.
Grrrr!!
I needed to change an airline ticket from Sue to Susan. On the phone for 5+ hours. Same scenario.
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