Christmas Flights-Search with Expedia, Travelocity, then Lose Em’
Yes, and make sure not to bend over this holiday season if you actually use Expedia, Travelocity, etc. to book a flight and then need to make changes. This is an absolute nightmare story from The Consumerist about one person’s recent encounter with ‘the roaming gnome’. About 7 years ago I myself booked a Delta ticket to Sweden with Expedia, needed to make some changes and was passed back and forth between the two companies, costing me hours of my time.
These days I never book tickets with these companies but use them to search all the time. They are a great search tool for finding good deals (albeit you should still look other places) but there is seriously no reason to actually book your plane tickets with these companies.
These companies have little to no special deals with the airlines and make their money off the $5 service fee they charge. So what I do is use them to search and find the cheapest airline and then go to that airlines website and book the tickets directly through them. Aside from saving $5 I know that if I need to make changes that I will only have to deal with the airline directly.
If you have your own Expedia/Travelocity horror story drop me a comment and let me know. Of course, being on an airplane these days is like being on a flying Greyhound but that’s a whole different issue.
Evil ‘Roaming Gnome’ from this place.
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POSTED IN: Consumer Awareness
2 opinions for Christmas Flights-Search with Expedia, Travelocity, then Lose Em’
ken
Dec 18, 2007 at 12:55 am
Also had problems with Expedia. There are big price difference for the same fights depending on which Expedia web page you acess. They refuse to transfer credits to other Expedia co’s.
Alex
Dec 18, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Ken-Thanks for that comment, I just learned something! I had no idea Expedia had several different sites for different countries (makes total sense of course). But yeah, I just had a look and they have lots of different sites.
And yeah, no surprise they were assholes about doing anything to help you.
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