Expedia – Hidden Costs Revealed | part 2 (Customer Service Failure)

Here as promised is part 2 of the “ Expedia Hidden Costs Revealed” post. It has been a while since I wrote part 1, however I wanted to give Expedia.co.uk every opportunity to reply and answer my questions before publishing. After over 1 month from writing part 1 and almost 2 months since I made the booking I guess I can post with a clear conscience.

Just to recap on the situation; I had made a booking for a return flight on Expedia.co.uk. During the booking process a small amount (£4.10 =$6) was added to the total cost of the flight. However no warning of an increase was posted. I assumed that Expedia.co.uk would not engage in any underhand price hikes and so this was surely an error that would be rectified on completion of the booking.

This amount whilst small in comparison to the cost of the flight was never the less enough to make me contact Expedia’s customer service and ask for an explanation. Additionally Expedia.co.uk unlike Expedia.com has lately also decided to add a £9 ($13) booking fee to all flight tickets purchased on their site, which made my “additional” costs even higher. I have since posted a short review of other reputable travel sites where no “booking” fees are charged as well as my comments on those sites.

In my first query (See full copy here) to Expedia.co.uk, I explained what had occurred and questioned why I should have been charged this extra amount, which I assumed was an error.

After 11 days I got a reply from Ian, telling me about the new charges (£9 booking fee) and explaining why these were being charged. He however failed to address the question I had raised regarding the extra charge of £4.10. His email together with my reply to that email can be seen HERE

I replied and pointed out that I was not concerned about, nor querying the booking fee, but sought an explanation for the added £4.10 I had been charged.

Furthermore Ian asserted that “Expedia’s number one priority is to provide the highest quality customer service for all our customers” To which I replied that this seemed dubious in view of the 11 days it took to reply to my query. Again I asked for an answer as to why I had been charged an extra £4.10.

This time it was a mere 2 days before Anna replied with a curt two line solution to my problem. Her solution was that I had the option of making a new booking and she advised “Make sure you purchase the fare immediately to avoid a repeat of the same problem.” A fairly bizarre statement which did nothing to reassure me nor indeed answer my question.

As it had by now been two weeks since I originally made this booking, a fact Anna had seemingly missed, this option was only available if I was prepared to pay significantly higher prices for my ticket.

Whilst not denying that there had been a problem (see email here) Anna took no steps to resolve this issue or make any explanation of why this had occurred.

Instead Anna tried to shift the responsibility for resolving this problem to me, with a suggestion that would have effectively swept the problem “under the carpet.” Hardly the kind of support I needed.

However I persevered and replied to Anna again asking for an explanation of this “mystery” amount that had been added to my flight costs.

This time I got an answer the very next day from Antoinette (see email here). Antoinette “seems” to have misunderstood the nature of my enquiry entirely. Her email said “Thank you for your e-mail regarding the new charges on the web site.” She went on to explain the, yes you guessed it, £9 booking fee, whilst singularly failing to even mention the other of those “charges” she had just mentioned.

Successful stonewalling or stupidity & ineptness I leave that for you to decide. For me however it was clear that I would never get support from this company. As for the “EXTRA” amount I was charged for the flight or indeed how many others had similar price hikes on Expedia.co.uk, that too would remain a mystery.

In summation then I had been charged extra for my purchase, customer service was worse than useless and very time consuming and for all that I also had the privilege of paying a booking fee.

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