Expedia - www.expedia.com Review

Good Points
Good search engine.

Bad Points
Bad customer service. Flight information incorrect.

General Comments
Why book through Expedia? The prices aren ' t any better; it ' s the same as if booking directly. It may be convenient, but if you have to make a change, get comfortable, it will take a lot of time, energy and patience and after all that your problem probably won ' t be resolved. In January I booked my May flights from LAX to Cusco, Peru through Expedia. A few weeks after booking my flights, I received an e-mail from Expedia notifying me that my return flight was changed, no biggie as the time was only 20 minutes difference.

A month before my trip, I try to look up my itinerary on Expedia. I could not access it, message said to wait 5 minutes and try again or e-mail them, or if you need immediate assistance to call. I waited and waited, still could not access it. So I sent them an e-mail, which they respond with their generic e-mail stating the procedure in which to view my itinerary, which I had already tried unsuccessfully. They also e-mailed me my itinerary. Great, so I look at my itinerary and notice that the return flight is not the same as my revised itinerary. Has my return flight changed back to the original booked flight? I look at the airlines website and both flights exist. I access my itinerary on the airlines website (since I can ' t access my itinerary on Expedia), it stated that my return flight was the revised flight and did not have my seats assigned.

On the itinerary that Expedia e-mailed me is a link to change or modify my flight, so I click the link, it can ' t access my itinerary. I tried a couple of different times throughout the day with no luck. I called and eventually spoke to someone in India, he was a nice man, who is only equipped with generic phrases and answers. I told him that I could not access my itinerary and that I wanted to see if our seats were assigned on our return flight. He said that there is nothing wrong with my itinerary and that my seats are only a request to the airlines and they are not guaranteed. Well why is it that when I book directly with the airlines, I always get the seats I book? Why am I using Expedia? Oh yeah, because I ' m a fool and didn ' t realize the horrors that may arise if I have a problem. I was going around and around with the man from India and explained to him about my revised itinerary and that the airlines has me on a different flight, etc. I kept my cool and didn ' t blow up at the patient man from India, he doesn ' t know. Anyhow, I thanked the nice man from India and called the airlines directly. The airlines told me that since I didn ' t book directly with them that I would be charged $15 per person for each change, but that I could also do it from their website, which I tried, since it was an international flight it could not be changed online. I begrudging gave them my credit card info and had my seats assigned for my return flight. The airlines said that if I did not get the seats that they assigned, I would get my money back.

My first mistake was booking through Expedia; my second mistake was when I was advised that my return flight had changed, I should have investigated it further and not assume that Expedia would have the common sense to assign the same seats or similar seats.

This was a learning experience, never book through Expedia and probably other travel companies. The travel company website are great to search for prices and they provide a lot of information, but when booking travel, go directly to the source. I ' ll still use Expedia to search for travel information, hey they have cute commercials. But I won ' t use any travel companies to book travel!!! Lesson learned!!!