Surprise! We changed our mind - your ticket is actually $700 more!
Written: Mar 14 '02 (Updated Mar 14 '02)
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Expedia has twice "bait and switch"ed me to higher prices after I have given my credit card information and given final confirmation I want to purchase the offered ticket. In this review I will give an overall impression of the process of buying a ticket with Expedia, talk about my particular bad experiences, and also briefly talk about the competitors. (are they any better?)
Overall Experience:
Like all flight search engines, Expedia is fast and easy to use. Right off their home page, you can enter in the details, and select your options (direct flights only, morning/afternoon...). No login required. The engine then searches for the best prices for those flights, and lists them in order of "price", cheapest first. The engine is more flexible then some of their competitors, finding non-US originating flights, as well as flights on smaller carriers. Although the search engine asks you for morning/noon/evening departure/arrival times, these are only used on very serviced routes. Most of my trips are international travel, so this parameter is ignored.
It is my experience that flight prices can change greatly day to day (even minute to minute). In a way, buying tickets online is like gambling - you can keep waiting for a better price, or suddenly find yourself stuck paying full rate.
Once you have your flight details, changing the search (perhaps to find surrounding days that are cheaper) is easier with a sidebar with your original search details. There is no automatic way to specify multiple days/times you are willing to fly, in order to find the best price.
After you've selected your flight, you go through the process of picking your seat, (either using the auto-seat-picker, or picking your own seats, which doesnt work on all flights). Finally, you enter your credit card info (or use Microsoft's Passport), and confirm the details, and pray. If you're lucky, you might get the originally quoted price. If you're unlucky:
Surprise! Your ticket is actually significantly more expensive! But thanks for your credit card info and wasted time!
Costa Rica, Dec '01
My first miserable experience with Expedia was last December. I was trying to find tickets from San Francisco to Costa Rica (I could also leave from Oakland, or LAX). I started looking about 2.5 weeks ahead of departure date. I was traveling over the busy holiday period, but since 9/11, I was still hoping to have some luck.
And luck I had! $500 return. Reasonable! I nailed down the details with my wife, and the next day, went and checked the engine again. Suddenly it was $1400. Cursing my luck, I decided to sit and wait and see if prices moved again. I checked again later that day and it was back to $500. Great, I thought, and proceeded to book. I got through all the info screens, picked our individual seats from a seat map of the airplanes, and gave my credit card info relatively quickly. When I finally confirmed, Expedia informed me that "Due to rapidly changing ticket conditions, that ticket is no longer available. The price is now $1300". I cursed, returned to the home page, and performed the same search - and true to their word, the ticket had gone up in price. I sat on it again for another day, searching every few hours to find the elusive $500 ticket. Finally it popped up again. Faster then ever, I entered my info, and got the same error message. I called up Expedia's customer service. After the usual brush-off by the customer service rep., I gave my usual "I want to speak with your supervisor". He claimed there wasn't one around (I love these guys). "I know this conversation is being recorded 'for quality assurance'. I have your name. Now pass me to your supervisor immediately." The supervisor gets on, does the same search, has the same problem - the ticket disappeared. No apology, just "rapidly changing conditions". I told him it happens every time, and that the ticket keeps appearing and reappearing. He tried to claim it was because the Costa Rica carrier's computers only update Expedia twice a month, but that still doesnt explain why it kept changing. He finally admits there must be a technical glitch - too bad. Thank you come again! I told him this was extremely deceptive business practice, and that I would be filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau unless they honored the original quoted price (which was still appearing on their flight engine searches!). He refused. My complaint to BBB was never responded to.
Not to leave you hanging, we never found any seats to Costa Rica. Despite there being seats empty, the "financially strapped" carriers were charging exorbitant fees for a 7 hour flight. We drove to New Orleans instead.
Toronto, Mar '02
Perhaps my problem with flying to Costa Rica was just that the carrier was small, and there was some link up problem between the computers. I decided to try to give them another shot with a simple direct flight from SFO to Toronto on United. One day, $600. Next day, $424 - great - let's go for it. I entered in all my info, and - yes, you guessed it - "Your flight price has changed to $540, click PROCEED to accept this new price"! I surfed over to Orbitz in disgust. They offered the $540 price too - straight up. I finally ended up booking the ticket on Air Canada's web site - they had the best price of all of them! $520. In addition, Air Canada HELD the seats for 15 minutes for me as I completed the reservation. Much less stressful.
The competition
I have tried Orbitz, Travelocity, and Qixo. Orbitz is the new kid on the block, and is run by the airlines themselves. It seems to be the best deal in town. Interestingly enough, orbitz was also reporting wrong prices for my Costa Rica trip, but every time I selected the price, for more info, it would display the new price on the next screen without getting me to confirm any further. (sometimes the price went from 500, 600, 700, 900, finally $1200 before the price was actually there!) But at least this happened before they asked for my credit card #.. I have since used Orbitz without any hitch. Their post-purchase service is excellent, too, with a great interface for flight status, paging you with flight updates, etc.
Travelocity is a little more complicated - you have to create an account to access their search engine. Their prices are not as good as Orbitz or Expedia.
Qixo (www.qixo.com) is an even newer kid on the block, but I dig the idea. They are not an engine themselves, but instead they sent your request out to multiple engines, collate the results, and present them. (sort of like metacrawler does with search engines) They will directly search some of the small carriers that other engines miss. I have not had much luck with them for international flights (the list of sites they search for you isnt that extensive yet), but it's a great concept and I wish them luck. They will also soon start offering an email service (similar to CNET's price drop alert) which will alert you when a particular flight on a particular day falls below a threshold you have set.
Conclusion
Be careful out there! Don't get excited about or trust any price until you've got the confirmation in your email. Expedia is the most dishonest of all the search engines. And if you're not happy with any online prices, wait a day!
Thanks for reading. I appreciate all comments. Please check out my other reviews.
Recommended:
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Epinions.com ID:
isewell
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Member: Ian Sewell
Location: Santa Rosa
Reviews written: 57
Trusted by: 19 members
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