The Site: Expedia.com
- Save an average of $220 when you Book Expedia Flights and Hotels Together.
- Free Expedia “Thank You: Rewards Network”. You earn 1 point for every $1 that you spend with Expedia. You can later redeem these points for Expedia flights, travel, gift cards, electronics, and even household appliances. However, you will need about 100 points to equal $1 of redeemable currency for travel. Your frequent flyer program can be used in conjuction, and it is not adversely affected. If you have a CitiBank account, you may be able to earn even more points in this Rewards Network.
- For Expedia coupon codes and deals, check out their last minute flights and hotel deals pages. Check back often, prices change rapidly.
- Expedia “Trip Assist” application for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. With the Expedia Trip Assist app, you can get free real-time flight status updates for any flight and book travel directly from your phone or mobile device.
- Expedia “Elite Plus” is a member’s-only club for their best customers. To qualify as a member, you must stay 12 hotel nights or book $10,000 worth of travel from Expedia within one year. You will be automatically enrolled when you qualify. Your benefits include “exclusive discounts”, priority call handling, and Expedia will waive any change or cancellation fees.
- Expedia Insiders’ Select: The ultimate list of the world’s best hotels and resorts. Expedia “Package Protection” includes coverage for service fees on Expedia’s flights, hotels, cars and activities in the event you change or cancel a trip for any reason prior to the start of the trip or interrupt a trip for a covered reason. The cost varies depending on your destination. It generally ranges from $49 to $89 per person *.
- Choose your own adventure. Book Adventure Travel: Explore, discover and escape!
- 360° Virtual Tours of hotels.
- Read about World Heritage sites: “treasures of humanity prized by historians, ecologists, and art lovers, as well as by their own communities” along with tips for responsible travel.
- Expedia negotiates directly with hotel suppliers to secure access to exclusive rates with over 70,000 properties world-wide.
- Be Green: rent hybrid rental cars at Expedia.com.
- Get rewarded for planning early with special deals on Expedia flights, hotels and vacation packages.
- Email alerts and RSS feeds to get automatic updates sent to your own computer’s homepage.
- 24 hour live customer support
The Good:
The way Expedia rates their hotels is more comprehensive than other sites. We love the “Insiders’ Select” hotel listing, because you can enter in the city that you are traveling to and it will instantly provide a list of the best rated hotels. Expedia does not base this list solely on customer ratings (like many other travel sites). Rather, they take an objective approach in rating hotels and “consider a wide array of factors, including ratings from independent ratings systems, media recognition, and post-trip surveys of our customers“. You can read just the customer reviews on the “Insider’s Direct” page as well. After you find the best rated hotel in your budget, you can easily book it right there on the page. Remember to go back and write your own review after your trip, because these websites need your input!
The Bad:
Expedia claims that 99.85% of their customers are satisfied with their experience. We found online complaints from customers claiming that their Expedia reservations were cancelled, even after Expedia claimed that their reservation was “guaranteed”. These complaints seem to have caused many to lose their trust in Expedia and there are entire websites dedicated to declaring Expedia a scam. We’ve gotten more customer complaints about Expedia, relative to the competition. We caution you to confirm all reservations directly with the airlines, hotels, and cruise lines prior to departure. This is also Expedia’s own advice, “All flights should be confirmed with the airline directly. We recommend that you do so at least 24 hours prior to departure for domestic flights (72 hours for flights to Hawaii and international destinations)“. Also, be aware that Expedia cannot guarantee that your flight seat requests will be honored by the airline, “On certain flights, the airline will allow Expedia to request seats on your behalf (via our Seat Pinpointer tool), but these are only requests, and need to be verified with the airline”
We do not feel that Expedia is a scam based on a few online complaints, because they still seem few and far between. Keep in mind that most people who have good experiences with Expedia are not going to go out and leave positive comments on forums and create websites called “ExpediaIsAwesome.com”. Rather, it’s angry customers with bad experiences that make their voices heard on the internet. Expedia is one of the largest online travel agencies, so there are bound to be complaints. Just use caution, and confirm everything before you go. We recommend this no matter who you book with.
Did you have a good or bad experience with Expedia? Leave your comments below, we want to hear about it.
The Fees*:
- $0 change fee by Expedia on “flights” or “hotels”. (Be aware that the variable “booking fee” is not refundable, and airlines typically will charge you for changes).
- $50 charge by Expedia to change a booked “vacation package”, plus any fees charged by the suppliers. (Unless you purchase Package Protection).
- Booking fees vary, and are disclosed when you make the purchase. For further explanation of Expedia’s new booking fee policy, visit this article on Examiner.com. “Vacation Packages” usually cannot be cancelled.
- If a booked flight allows changes, but is non-refundable, you will generally have 12 months from the time the ticket was booked (not canceled) to rebook the flight. You still need to pay any cancellation fees imposed by the airline and the new ticket must be with the same airline and for the same passenger.
- If you cancel hotels or properties, they can only be cancelled pursuant to the hotel’s policy. The hotel may charge a penalty.
*Based solely on research done by TravelSiteCritic.com. May be inaccurate, or subject to change. You must read the policies on Expedia.com prior to booking. Reviews disclosure
The Deals *:
We just came back from a trip to Quebec City and booked a cruise trip with Expedia that turned out to be an embarrassment.
The Quebec City Evening Cruise was not what we expected and we are not fully satisfied. The activity specifically mentions a dinner. It turns out that what the cruise actually offers are sandwich and chips. SANDWICH AND CHIPS FOR DINNER!!! Please. That should have been disclosed by Expedia in advance. WE WERE NOT EXPECTING A SANDWICH, LET ALONE CHIPS, AS THE DINNER. It turns out that we had to sit in the dining room with other folks who had booked a 5-course meal. The maitre noticed our disappointment and offered to give us the main course of the meal (and nothing else) in exchange for the sandwiches. Adding insult to injury, he repeatedly came with what he called the leftovers: appetizers and salads and offered them to our children (who by that time, 8:30 PM were very hungry and we could not reject them). Having to endure the humiliation of watching how others were well treated was too much for my husband, who was very upset by the whole experience.
Expedia should clearly state what is offered as a dinner in this activity, and possibly offer the 5-course meal option so that your customers are spared this humiliation.
After I submitted complaint to Expedia and got three emails back and called but guess what? after almost an hour phone conversation an Expedia customer representative made me feel like I was making all this up!!!! because she said she talked with the cruise folks already and said “everything that night ran smoothly like any other night”.
My suggestion: Book with a different carrier next time.
I was just curious if anyone has tried out Expedia’s unknown hotel until you book because its 55% off deal. Im scared to try it out, because I dont want to be stuck in a hotel or a deal that I cant get out of, and then in return have a terrible trip.
My husband and I, plus my sister-in-law and her husband, my daughter and her family of 5, and 4 others , all booked our Mediterrannean cruise with Expedia cruises and Expedia travel for our hotel and air reservations. Not one of us had a problem. All personnel were professional and very helpful. I would use them again without question. Thanks Expedia i give them 5 stars!
This website and its customer service depart are morons and thieves. First and foremost, do not even attempt to book with them, especially if they are going to give you Hertz for car rental.
Hertz does not even recognize the car insurance waiver that this stupid website offers – which based on the package is cheaper than an average fee would be. Of course, you would not know that AFTER the fact you are already in front of the counter getting your damned rental. At first, Hertz will innocently tell you that they do not see that LDW on the reservation, thinking STUPID EXPEDIA, so when they asked you if you want to add, of course you would say YES, duh, its was part of the package you got, and BAM, they charge you almost $30/day for the LDW when you were only charged $9/day on EXPEDIA. You need the car to get to the hotel so you can contact EXPEDIA. And of course, Hertz will also tell you that the charges can be corrected once the issue has been resolved. Hertz billing said “Cannot help because the billing is not yet in the system because I still have the car.” Also was told for the second time, the bill will be corrected AFTER the issue has been resolved and AFTER I returned the car. I called EXPEDIA to help me with this issue. Thinking this lady at customer service knows what she was doing, I was very patient with her. I was wrong. She transferred me to HERTZ RESERVATION. How can they help me? That’s reservation! She even transferred me to the wrong department much less to the wrong company. So now I’m stuck with $90 bill for LDW from Expedia and $355.00 from HERTZ! Next thing to do will be contacting the BBB in Florida and Atty General.
This feedback is regarding Itinerary 132194306358. I booked a rental car with ACE as requested by the representative at expedia. My flight and hotel for this trip were also booked by expedia. My return flight was booked at 6 30 AM in the morning. The rep told me that ACE rental company was open 24 hours and hence i can return the car anytime. But after reaching Miami,when i approached the ACE rental company they told me that they open at 6 Am in the morning. As i could not return the car at 6 AM I had to cancel the contract. But since the ACE company charged my credit card, i was not able to use it to book other rental cars and had to spend whole night at airport waiting for ACE to open to reverse the charged on my Credit card. When contacted expedia at midnight the response from one of the supervisors for very bad. She started raising her voice and said that she could not help. This is a very bad experience with expedia and i ended up paying double charges for booking last minute car.
People at expedia work only for commission and not for customers. They can not be trusted and never have faith on them to help you in difficult situations.They do not know about the partners they are working with. Pathetic situation!!!!!
All I can say at this point is that I will never go through expedia again and don’t recommend that anyone else does either. Our is a cautionary tells of what happen when you use expedia when traveling outside the country.
This happen to me last week when I went Mexico with my family. There were five of us my boyfriend, my 18 years old sister, and my two cousins. I paid 5 adult airfare and hotel package through Expedia. Everything was going fine until we got the hotel where they said that expedia only booked for 4 adult and 1 infant child for us. If the 5th person were to stay with us we will need to pay $600 more. The hotel said that if we can get expedia to send them an update itinerary stating that we paid for 5 adults they will not make us pay the extra money.
So what did expedia do when we call them:
Call one, cost $38 usd, we were on hold for 30 minutes and expedia hang-up on us.
Call two, cost $62 usd, we were on hold for 1 hour and expedia hang up on us. Before she hang up on us, the rep promises to contact the hotel. We check with the hotel and they said expedia never got in contact with them.
Call three, cost $45 usd, we were on hold for 45 minutes and expedia hang up on us. He too before he hang up on us, the rep promises to contact the hotel. Once again we check with the hotel and they said expedia never got in contact with them.
Call four, cost $0.0, we call using Skype it took 10 minutes because the rep hang-up when we told him we were on Skype.
Email 1, we ask for expedia help they tell us they can’t help us that we need to call them.
Email 2, we tell expedia that every time calls the rep hang-up on us. We got one of those we are sorry that this is happening to you but we can’t help you that goes something like:
“Expedia.com goes to great lengths to supply our clients with the information and opportunity to make well-informed travel purchases, and we are more than willing to assist our clients in any way commercially possible. We at Expedia are dedicated to providing knowledgeable service and support to our clients, but we are constrained by the policies of the vendors whose services we provide on our website. When a flight itinerary or hotel itinerary is purchased on Expedia.com, we act as the agent between the client and the vendor. Any transactions are governed by the rules and restrictions put in place by the vendor providing the service. Nevertheless, please be assured that your complaints have been duly noted”
Does not help us much when you we were stranded in a foreign country do it now?
When we got back to the US we call expedia to tell them what happen, their executive rep tell us it’s our fault after I was hold for 2 hours to talk to her. I told her, yes I should have read the itinerary more closely then I would have known that the hotel part was listing my sister as an infant child. I try to tell her that we paid for 5 adults that we flew down on Jet Blue with five adult why would be then turn one of the adult into an infant child. If she only check she would see that we paid for 5 adults, but her respond was that the itinerary clearly state 5 adult flew down and 4 adult and one infant child for the hotel. If we were have five adult staying at the hotel then the hotel should charge us for the extra person. I told her to check here record again, we paid for five adult, and she follows with the itinerary said 4 adult and 1 infant child. You can see how this went right? A few round of this I got frustrated and hang-up on her.
Needless to say I have over eight hours of my life and paid $745 in addition to what I paid expedia for this trip.
DO NOT TRUST EXPEDIA. If you ever have to cancel a flight, they will immediately take off 25% for their own profits, despite having a million warnings everywhere that they have reduced fees (which are BS). Then, if you do not book with the exact same airline within an arbitrary period that expedia defines, they will take the remaining 75% for themselves, WITH NO WARNINGS. I would highly recommend finding another site to conduct your business. F- rating.
I’m glad to hear that if you cancel your flight, you can use the funds toward another flight within a year.
Twitter: Pamela_Jones
says:
Ashley, keep in mind that the Expedia website says there are restrictions to this and that you still need to pay airline cancellation fees and penalties, which can be steep. You would need to pay cancellation fees and penalties to the airline even if you booked directly with them. One airline that offers refundable fares is Jet Blue Airways, as an option on the booking screen select “refundable fares”. http://travelsitecritic.com/reviews/1/jet-blue/
I used Expedia for many years and everything was more or less ok. There prices were rather competitive (not always though). They stored mine and my family members’ info, so it helped to expedite the booking. Several times prices jumped when I tried to book a flight but it used to happen during the booking process before I hit the “Buy” button and I had a choice either to go with a higher price or just drop the whole thing. But yesterday I had a really bad experience. A day before I booked a flight for $922 and received email with travel confirmation from Expedia that included a receipt for that amount. When the next day I went to the Expedia site to print out my itinerary I was astounded to see that the booking price was $1172 ($250 increase). When I contacted their customer service they gave me some strange explanation that included something about the airline, the ticket pricing, etc. What they failed to explain to me is how can I rely on their advertized prices that make my decision to buy from them if they can change prices after booking. Very bad and unacceptable business practice.