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Expedia - Vacation Packages

• Air travel • Hotels • Vacation packages --- News • Expedia Ordered to Reimburse Extra Tax Charged to Consumers

Brian of Hoboken, NJ August 8, 2007

I was lured by a homepage ad on expedia.com to a vacation package they were offering. I selected a beach vacation and entered the dates for my trip (8/6/07 to 8/10/07) and chose the Pelican Bay Yacht Club in the Bahamas as my destination/resort. I picked my flights, and all seemed well in order.

I'm not at all familiar with any of the Caribbean Islans, so i trusted expedia to put me on a plane that would take me to the bahamas, where i had chosen my resort. Little did i know they had put me and my girlfriend on a flight to grand cayman island. Remember, this was a vacation PACKAGE (so you'd think expedia would appropriately match airfare and hotel, right?) WRONG. their customer service was a joke. they cancelled my reservation at pelican bay and booked a new hotel for us in Grand Cayman, a Marriott Courtyard. It is most definitely not the hotel i would have chosen if i had chosen to visit the caymans, but it's all they could do and all they did was give us 100 off our trip, and another 100 credit towards a future expedia trip.

Will i ever use that credit? Maybe - to book a room and never show up just for spite. The credit they gave us doesn't even cover the exchange rates, which we didn't think we'd have to deal with b/c we were never planning on going to the caymans.

They sent us to the wrong country!! and they claimed it was my fault since i booked it online and if i had booked it through a representative they would have been able to do more... but is expedia an online company? or a company you have to call to make travel arrangements? doesn't make sense, the company is a joke all around. absolutely PATHETIC. i'm too frustrated for words, and i need to book another vacation to get away from this one.

Joseph of Brooklyn, NY March 1, 2007

I booked an air/hotel package through Expedia.com for two people to go to Aruba on 2/9/07 for a total package price of 2479.94. After looking on 2/28/07 at expedia.com for the same EXACT itinerary the price had dropped to 1918.34 a difference of 561.60. When I called Expedia to try and refund the difference I was told there is no way to refund the money since my trip was paid in full. I asked what about canceling the trip and rebooking it and I was told that came with numerous penalties and it couldn't be done with my package. They there was nothing they could do there are no refunds.

Fred of Ffairfax, CA March 16, 2006

I was quoted a price of 834, per person for a trip to Ixtapa Mexico on 3/14/06. While I was in the process of paying on line, the price jumped to 894. Finished the transaction. Called Expia customer support and was told the price had increased to 894 since I started the reservation. I checked the following morning and the price was quoted me was the original 834. I contacted them sevral times by Email and was told that prices had gone up and then they had no control over it, but finally admitted that it was a problem, but would not refund the additonal increase of 120, 60 per per person. Feels like a bait and switch

Ju of New York, NY March 3, 2006

On 2/6/06, I booked a vacation package (air + hotel to Philipsburg, Sint Maarten) through Expedia.com for the dates of 2/11/06 - 2/18/06. On 2/8/06, Expedia.com contacted me to tell me that my hotel, the Pelican Resort Club, was overbooked and that I would have to relocate to another hotel. I was adamant that I be placed in a similar facility - that is, a resort - with comparable amenities, such as a pool, gym, spa, etc. I had chosen the Pelican Resort Club because I had read that it was located on a very nice beach in Sint Maarten. Moreover, I was paying over 2,000 for two people for airfare and hotel, and I knew those prices reflected a stay in a full-fledged resort.

However, their website did not offer any other comparable options. Other resorts were either not located on a beach or did not offer comparable amenities. The last thing I wanted to do was to spend extra money for cab or car rental fees in trying to get to other beaches. I spent over three hours on the phone with various customer service representatives, trying to explain to them that their other options did not merit what I had paid for and that if they were going to place me in a simple hotel without resort amenities, as they were trying to do, then they would have to refund me a significant amount of money to match the difference or refund my vacation entirely.

They were unsympathetic, unhelpful, and unprofessional. They claimed that they would not be able to refund the airfare portion of my package; they best they could do was give me a credit balance with the airline, which was no refund at all. They also claimed that they could not place me in the alternative resort that I had chosen because it exceeded Expedia’s 400 match-in-difference policy. In essence, they forced me to accept the only hotel that had a mediocre beach on location, the Holland House Beach Hotel, and refused to pay for any car rental costs I would incur by renting a car to visit the beach at the Pelican Resort Club, my original choice. In addition, they only offered an insignificant 200 refund and promised me a free upgrade to a beach-view room, but then proceeded to make me pay for the upgrade by deducting the difference from the 200 refund.

I was then credited only 150, a paltry amount.

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