I guess I have learned my lesson......

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Normally, I never book flights through Expedia (or Orbitz or any other second party) after a problem that I had with a flight about a decade ago.  I go directly to the airline to book.  Normally.

So in preparation of our trip to Turkey later this week, we have a short flight from Istanbul to Dalaman.  I went with a Turkish regional airline called Pegasus air.  The website wasn't very user friendly, so I got frustrated and just wound up booking through Expedia.  

Last week, I get a text from Pegasus air that our outgoing flight to Dalaman has been canceled.  I call Expedia, and after going through their phone tree to speak to a person, I get cut off.  I call back, spend another 45 minutes on the phone trying to get our flight rebooked a little later.  Apparently Expedia needs Pegasus air's permission to put us on the 2 pm flight.  They emailed PA on 7/14 and have heard nothing from PA.  PA called me Mon am and asked me if I had rebooked, and I told them that Expedia was dealing with it.  So I get an email this morning which apparently was a flat out lie that PA never gave permission to put us on the flight because THEY NEVER HEARD FROM PA!  

So as soon as I get to the point where I can speak to someone civilly on the phone, I am going to call Expedia and get my $$ back.  I rebooked with Turkish Air (which we have flown before without issue) for almost the same schedule of flights.  

Lesson learned.

[ners]

The Walk of the Penguin Mich  Hugs.  Sorry for your frustrations.

[bean29]

My daughter works for a major US airline. She told me if you book through someone like Expedia, and you miss your flight or you have issues, you are SOL, they can not do anything for you.

I need to go through this with my DH, she and I talk about stuff and a lot of times, I don't share it with him. Years ago, we save a lot on hotels with expedia. I don't think they do as much for you as they did years ago. The hotels try to be a lot more competitive with their own web sites now.

I am glad you found this out before you left and were able to get rebooked. 

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Jul 17, 2019 12:06:55 GMT -5 bean29 said:

My daughter works for a major US airline. She told me if you book through someone like Expedia, and you miss your flight or you have issues, you are SOL, they can not do anything for you.

I need to go through this with my DH, she and I talk about stuff and a lot of times, I don't share it with him. Years ago, we save a lot on hotels with expedia. I don't think they do as much for you as they did years ago. The hotels try to be a lot more competitive with their own web sites now.

I am glad you found this out before you left and were able to get rebooked. 

Hotels and cars I usually book through Expedia.  Even all of the reservations I made in South Africa went fairly smoothly.  The only reservation I didn't book through them was our stay in the Maldives, but that was for 2 reasons.  The Expedia interface did not have access to speedboat transport from the airport to the resort, which was on another island and I'd have had to make alternative arrangements,  and it did not include the all inclusive option.  Paying for food and alcohol a la carte would have been very expensive on an island where we had no other options than the resort (the resort essentially took up the whole island).  

We are going to Fiji next year for TD to dive.  I am finding the same issues there, so will likely work through the dive resort website directly rather than Expedia.  

Some hotels do have better prices, but it becomes a crap shoot.  Last month, I was trying to get a single night in Vancouver, near the convention center.  Expedia had rates at $450+/night in the area we wanted to be in.  The online hotel rates were as high, or higher.  I wound up going through Hotwire.  I didn't care too much about hotel, but as you can direct your location and price, it worked and I was able to get it for $250/night.  Still high, but better than other sites.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Well, that conversation with Expedia went about as well as I could expect.  I called yesterday afternoon, after my anger at receiving that email that told me that NOTHING had been done and my refund request was acknowledged. 

After going through their phone tree again, I got passed to 3 other people until I finally got to the person who could do something for me.  He kept trying to rebook my flight, and I kept telling him that Expedia had a week to deal with this and I was running out of time and needed this resolved today.  I could not wait any longer, so rebooked on another airline (Turkish Air's US online interface is MUCH more user friendly).  I told him that we wanted our money refunded.  He attempted again to try to convince me to rebook, and I finally got angry at him and told him that that ship has sailed.  Pegasus cancelled our flight, we did not accept their alternative, so we wanted our money back.  So the CSA that I dealt with supposedly put in our request and I was supposed to receive a confirmation email....I have not.  We would be getting our refund in 8 weeks.

So I went ballistic on that.  They sure can take the money from my credit card quickly, why does it take so damn long to get it back when it is deserved?  Now we run into a second glitch.  The tickets were booked 4/23.  You have only 90 days to file with your credit card company for a dispute and 90 days is when we will be in Istanbul.  So TD put together an email to Costco Citibank to dispute the charge.  I'm not exactly sure what is going to happen here, but he wants to cover all possible scenarios covered.  I think they are.

This is for $285.....not a lot of money but enough that it is worth the effort.  

I had a second thought.  In Europe, an airline has to book you out within a certain amount of time or pay up $700/seat.  I wonder if we could have gone this route?  However, it is not worth the aggravation when you are on vacation.

[TheOtherMe]

On my CC dispute, the CC company told me that 90 days is not a hard and fast rule.  I was well within my 90 days on my dispute, but the CSA said a dispute can be filed after 90 days.

I did call them after I received the letter that the CC company found in my favor on the dispute because I wanted to see if I could dispose of the non-working computer.  I was told all a dispute does is stop the transaction but it does not stop the company from taking me to Collections.  Just what I need.  

She said I could contact Dell but I decided I will just wait and see and let the non-working computer sit a bit longer before I recycle it.

[justme]

Online travel agents are fine if you have no issues, but if you have any issues booking with them usually makes it a clusterfuck. You're just adding a middleman for all your dealings for pretty much the same cost as booking with the airline. If you're saving money over the airline's website you're likely purchasing discounted fares that have a lot of restrictions on them that make changes even harder. And like bean says the airlines pretty much don't want to help and tell you to ask your travel agent that's honestly more of a travel booker.

I don't know if Expedia does it, but some OTA will book your travel in s series of different one way tickets. It can save you money, but without your tickets being linked and on the same PNR if you miss your connection due to a flight delay you're SOL.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

I was not booking my Pegasus flights on Expedia because they were cheaper, but the US online interface at Pegasus air website was frustrating.  I spent entirely too much time to have my information go ‘poof’ and no ticket.  Several attempts, and I looked for another way of booking the flights.  This was a goof on my part. Maybe I should have pressed on trying to use the crappy airline interface. 

The bigger problem was that apparently Expedia needed permission from Pegasus to rebook my flights to the ones that fit my schedule.  Pegasus did rebook me automatically,  but for the next day.  Only problem with that is that I had 2 hotel reservations and a car reservation that I would have to modify.  That was too much work.

[sesfw]

Yesterday I booked a hotel room for 3 nights in Sept through bookings.com and that was a huge mistake.

I cancelled the room within 4 hours and got notification that the room charge was non-refundable,  I called the hotel and was told I had to go back to bookings to see about a refund.  So I did and there isn't anywhere on the home page for any kind of email message or phone number.

Guess I'm SOL ....... and I'm not happy about it.

Beware ........ bookings.com ........ Use them to look up a hotel, then call the hotel directly to make your reservation.

Hopefully if I keep looking I'll find someway to contact them for an explanation.

In the mean time ........ 

[wvugurl26]

I would dispute it with the credit card company.

I found this number 888-850-3958.

[Gardening Grandma]

Jul 17, 2019 12:06:55 GMT -5 bean29 said:

My daughter works for a major US airline. She told me if you book through someone like Expedia, and you miss your flight or you have issues, you are SOL, they can not do anything for you.

That was my experience after booking a flight on British Airways using American Airlines miles.  BA cancelled the flight, but when I asked them to book us on a later flight, they told us "you have to talk to American because you booked the flight with American miles".  At the time, I was on a ship off the coast of Norway - it was a huge hassle to get to someone who could rebook us.   (The upside was that due to EU regulations, BA owed us about $600 each for cancelling the flight)

A few months ago, I used Expedia to book a flight on Canada Air.  I kept checking Canada Air's website, but the price difference was over $500 to book directly with them  Hoping the flight doesn't have any issues.

[saveinla]

Aug 1, 2019 21:02:33 GMT -5 sesfw said:

Yesterday I booked a hotel room for 3 nights in Sept through bookings.com and that was a huge mistake.

I cancelled the room within 4 hours and got notification that the room charge was non-refundable,  I called the hotel and was told I had to go back to bookings to see about a refund.  So I did and there isn't anywhere on the home page for any kind of email message or phone number.

Guess I'm SOL ....... and I'm not happy about it.

Beware ........ bookings.com ........ Use them to look up a hotel, then call the hotel directly to make your reservation.

Hopefully if I keep looking I'll find someway to contact them for an explanation.

In the mean time ........ 

www.booking.com/content/contact-us.html

[saveinla]

We routinely book flights through Expedia and (knock on wood) have not had any issues so far. We just came back from a trip and I could not get the dates that I needed through the airlines, but expedia had them and we went through them. Even when we go through expedia, we have the confirmation from the airline and can call to check if all is fine.

[sesfw]

Thanks for the link saveinla .......... I've sent an email and hope to hear soon.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Aug 2, 2019 10:11:18 GMT -5 saveinla said:

We routinely book flights through Expedia and (knock on wood) have not had any issues so far. We just came back from a trip and I could not get the dates that I needed through the airlines, but expedia had them and we went through them. Even when we go through expedia, we have the confirmation from the airline and can call to check if all is fine.

The problem is the rebooking if there is an issue.  If you book directly with the airline, the airline rebooks you and it's not a big deal.  If you book through Expedia, you need to use Expedia as a go between and it isn't always easy.  

I will not do this again.  We were informed that it is going to take Expedia 8 weeks to refund our money too, despite the fact that our flight was canceled by the airline and we could not get a satisfactory replacement, they wanted to rebook us on a flight that was 24+ hours later, which would have screwed up 2 hotel reservations and a car rental.  

[sesfw]

Well, it's been more than a week and I've heard nothing.

I have seen TV commercials that Booking is saying no cancellation fees.

I'll have to send another email

[justme]

Aug 2, 2019 10:11:18 GMT -5 saveinla said:

We routinely book flights through Expedia and (knock on wood) have not had any issues so far. We just came back from a trip and I could not get the dates that I needed through the airlines, but expedia had them and we went through them. Even when we go through expedia, we have the confirmation from the airline and can call to check if all is fine.

That expedia had the flights but the airlines didn't probably means it was either a deeply discounted fare class or expedia at least some parts of it under different PNRs. If it was a different PNR and you missed your connection the airline would have no requirement to rebook your flight as they were booked as separate flights vs one long flight that had a connection. The lower fare class could be a problem if your flight was canceled or significantly delayed you are likely way down the line in priority to get rebooked. (Basic Economy fares are also last in line except for the discount fares some bookings sites get.)

If it works great it's awesome, but if something goes wrong you have to deal with your travel agent - which is Expedia (or whatever) and does not have any employees that are actual travel agents. Hopefully you keep not having problems!