I've just used Expedia to book a hotel reservation and discovered that using the middle man put me at a terrible disadvantage. Someone... The hotel or Expedia canceled OR failed to book my reservation, then couldn't find it when I called the day before to confirm. I spoke to the central reservations desk and the desk clerk at the hotel, both telling me they had no record of a reservation for me. On my return home and after receiving an e-mail from Expedia asking me to rate my experience at this hotel, I 've discovered that the hotel turned me in as a no-show, and I've forfeited the entire $996.40 for 2 rooms, 2 nights in a cancellation fee. Expedia required that I pay for the entire stay in advance, over a month ago. That's aggravation enough, but when I tried to call Expedia's customer service, I discovered that you can't talk to a human being there until you've waited a minimum 30 minutes on hold. Once you get that human voice, that person has no authority whatsoever and has to put you hold for another 20 minutes to round up a supervisor to talk to. The case has been assigned a number and the supervisor then needs about 10 minutes to "study" the notes. Rather than wait, I asked for a call back, only to discover that the supervisor either doesn't call back or just drops the call after I've been on hold for nearly 40 minutes. 3 supervisors later, I did get someone who called back and left a message on my cell phone, despite that I was at home waiting for the call, at the call back number I had given her. She left a message saying that Expedia will credit half the amount back and said that I should call her back with questions... Except she didn't leave a call back number. It's interesting to note that this American company based in Bellevue, Washington conducts its customer service business out of a Spanish speaking country. Every single person I spoke with was very polite and spoke good English, but with a very strong accent. Ultimately not one of these people had any authority and couldn't even give me the name of a department head I could speak with. After tracking down the business in Bellevue, I finally got ahold of someone, went back through the entire history again, waited on hold for 20 minutes again and was told that the hotel refused to refund anything, but it was Expedia that was so graciously refunding half my money. I have no reference numbers, no contact numbers and when that credit fails to show up on next month's charge card bill, I will probably have to write another bad review.in the case of a company like Expedia we have a middle man whose business is one thing-providing customer service. Expedia is currently conducting a customer survey and the president is on the phone promising that all surveys will be reviewed and their customers will get a response. Given my experience with their customer service department that ultimately is no better than talking to a computer, I sincerely doubt that the survey is anything more than a marketing stunt.
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