Expedia Unconfirmed Flight Sucks!
I got the following message in my inbox from the kind folks at Expedia:
We have received an unconfirmed response on your reservation. This means that the airline has not acknowledged the flight and/or fare that you originally purchased. We have attempted to restore the original flights and have been unsuccessful. Without confirmation from the airline, we are unable to ticket this reservation.
Please call us at 1-800-EXPEDIA as soon as possible and refer to your itinerary number so that we can work with you to make alternate arrangements. Unless you call within 72 hours of receiving this e-mail, your reservation will automatically cancel.
If you have further questions, feel free to reply to this e-mail or contact Expedia customer services at 1-800-397-3342 and reference case ID xxxxxx. You can also visit the Expedia.com “Customer Support” page (
) for more customer service information.
I always thought when I bought plane tickets from Expedia that somewhere tickets, real tickets, would be issued to me, a seat reserved and noted, etc. Unfortunately, everything seems to operate in batch-mode, where airlines give blocks of seats to online vendors who match them together in strange ways that allow the possibility that the tickets they’ve resold may not represent spots on a plane:
I’m not the only one complaining about this practice. See:
My bank account also looks quite cute, waiting for $3000 in refunds:
This isn’t to blame Expedia though. To their benefit, they are refunding the total amount over those two cancelled flights. Also, their customer service reps on the phone were extremely apologetic and kind. It’s more a flaw in the system of batch-time ticket booking. With a real-time synchronized process, this sort of thing could not happen.
This entry was posted on Sunday, December 24th, 2006 at 3:09 pm and is tagged with customer service reps, customer service information, time ticket, kind folks, alternate arrangements, strange ways, expedia, ticket booking, case id, batch mode, e mail, plane tickets, customer services, itinerary, customer support, inbox, confirmation, airlines, airline, real time. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.
12 Responses to 'Expedia Unconfirmed Flight Sucks!'
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Expedia Unconfirmed Flight Sucks! Posted in Travel, Airplane by Elliott Back on December 24th, 2006. I got the following message in my inbox from the kind folks at Expedia:. We have received an unconfirmed response on your reservation. ... - Expedia Unconfirmed Flight Sucks!
I always thought when I bought plane tickets from Expedia that somewhere tickets, real tickets, would be issued to me, a seat reserved and noted, etc. Unfortunately, everything seems to operate in batch-mode, where airlines give blocks ... - Expedia Unconfirmed Flight Sucks!
I got the following message in my inbox from the kind folks at Expedia:. We have received an unconfirmed response on your reservation. This means that the airline has not acknowledged the flight and/or fare that you originally purchased ...
on January 3rd, 2007 at 7:21 pm
[…] I found this one lately posted on 12-24-2006Â […]
on April 10th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
[…] Gagan wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptPlease call us at 1-800-EXPEDIA as soon as possible and refer to your itinerary number so that we can work with you to make alternate arrangements. Unless you call within 72 hours of receiving this e-mail, your reservation will … […]
on June 28th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Horrible. Never Never Never Never use Expedia. THIS IS A WARNING!!!!
As I was trying to book flights for a trip to Europe their web page gave me an error on the final “click”. Something about being unable to book a leg of the flight. Customer service also tried with me several times on the phone. We switched to a different credit card (their suggestion), and got the same error.
HOWEVER, THEY WERE CHARGING MY CREDIT CARD WITH EVERY ATTEMPT!!!
In less than one hour they had CHARGED my card over $8000, and NO tickets, NO reservations, NO confirmations. I called Delta who couldn’t find any reference to my tickets.
Guess what… the money IS TIED UP FOR FIVE DAYS until it “rolls off”. I have been on the phone for 4+ HOURS trying to clean this up. Bank can’t help me except to register a dispute, Delta can’t help me. AND EXPEDIA WON’T HELP ME.
Customer service people barely speak English, phone connections are bad.
DO NOT USE EXPEDIA - YOUR TRIP AND YOUR MONEY ARE IN DANGER
on August 8th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
[…] ElliotBack blog […]
on August 13th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
[…] ElliotBack blog […]
on September 11th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Don’t ever use expedia
1. service rep are horrible (non of them can speak english and they like to give you a run-a-round)
2. they like FEES (so they will charge you for anything that you want to change)
3. manager is never there. So you can never talk to an upper management.
I would rather pay $100 extra than going through all these head ache with them. So I would highly recommend that you try another service, I’ve made the biggest mistake for using expedia. Please do yourself a favor and use other services that are much better.
Expedia DOT SCAM!
on September 21st, 2007 at 12:43 pm
u are all idiots…tsk tsk tsk
on December 25th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Recently, I received the exact same e-mail about a month after purchasing my tickets. I called the number and they were extremely helpful booking new flights and I was not charged an additional fee.
The customer service rep, who spoke impeccable English, DID try to book a flight that would have left my party stranded in Las Vegas for about ten hours. When I explained that this was unacceptable, she called the airline and immediately fixed the problem, again with no additional fee.
on January 3rd, 2008 at 12:21 am
I will never use Expedia again. Here’s what happened:
A couple of weeks ago I was booking a flight and everything went through except my credit card billing address. The problem is that my credit card is through my employer so I don’t have the address. There are about a hundred different ways the employer’s address could be specified (department vs. no department, office address vs. mail code vs both, which order, etc.) I called the credit card company and they would not tell me the billing address. Of course work was closed because it was holiday break.
At that time I spoke with an Expedia rep who told me that the ticket would be held as long as I called when I had the billing address before the flight.
Tonight I call with the billing address. I spoke with two reps because I was cut off the first time. They both tell me they have no record of my prior conversation with the rep, and that it is not their policy to book a flight until the entire billing process is complete. Fortunately, the flight is still available - at $500 more. Unfortunately, for me, they will not honor the original price and my employer will not cover the additional cost.
They acknowledged that the rep may have told me that the flight was booked, but he was wrong. So I need to pay the higher price.
My point: Expedia should stand by what the reps say, even if they are wrong. Otherwise, how can I believe anything that Expedia ever says? Both cs reps responded by reiterating that they won’t honor the commitment because if it was wrong.
So I have asked that the call be escalated and I have been on hold for umpteen minutes waiting for the supervisor.
I find it astonishing that their policy is to not honor a commitment if the rep was wrong, even if it is entirely within their control to honor the commitment.
on February 12th, 2008 at 11:01 am
expedia is a joke. they do nothing but collect fees. they are in it for the airlines only, not customers. the very first time you have a real issue and you call them they will tell you (after putting you on hold for a while) that they are powerless and that if you really want to fix the issue then YOU need to call the airline. basically, they want us to believe they are just simply the greatest and are there to help us with out travel. at least this is how they are precieved as long as we dont have a problem.
because then, they will want more money or have to stick their heads in the sand and wait for you and your issue to go away.
expedia has lost my confidence forever!
ive been using expedia for years now and have book very many flights. this is the first problem ive ever had, and i have now learned expedias true colors. the way expedia has handled it all of the way through has shown what they are really NOT made off.
i have now found that if you contact the airlines direct you can get the flights for the same price. so why not just use expedias website, find what you want, then contact the airline direct. expedia is just a wall between you and the ones who can help solve an issue.
on March 17th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
[…] ElliotBack blog […]
on March 28th, 2008 at 5:08 am
I will never use expedia again. As itterated above, expedia will not fix a problem and will “pass the buck as the fault of the airline.” The problem is, I never dealt with the airline in the first place, why is it I would be responsible to deal with the airline when I went through expedia, I paid through expedia, I was confirmed through expedia? I called the airline, and of course they said that expedia must have done something wrong.