Sometimes it seems like all you get when making your travel arrangements on-line are lost reservations and double bookings. That was certainly what one reader recently discovered when she used Expedia to book an overnight stopover in San Antonio.
The reader writes:
"Talk about having problems with billing -- our experience with Expedia has left us cold about their services. My husband and I, my son and his girlfriend were on vacation in Texas. We had been staying in South Padre and decided to visit San Antonio before coming home. We drove from South Padre to San Antonio on a Friday, flying out early the next morning for home. I had made reservations through Expedia for a hotel for that Friday night. We arrived in San Antonio about 3:00 PM in the afternoon on Friday and proceeded to the hotel to check in before seeing the sites and the Riverwalk. The hotel did not have our reservations. We had misplaced the itinerary, so we could not confirm everything. Nor did we have the reservation number.
"In desperation, we went to the local library to use their computers to log back into Expedia and get a new copy of the itinerary. To this day I still don t understand why I could not log in. My user name and password would not work. So I could not get a new copy of the itinerary. My son, afraid we would be caught without a place to stay, logged into Expedia from another computer and made reservations at a different hotel in San Antonio, using his account and credit card. The library was closing and we left.
"As soon as we got back to the car in the parking lot, voila! The itinerary showed up. Having two sets of reservations, and information about both, my son immediately called Expedia to explain the problem. He spent nearly one-and-a-half hours straightening up the mess. They kept telling him the hotel he had made reservations with had a no-cancel policy. The hotel manager could not be contacted to make any exceptions. But, they would cancel the reservations that I had made and credit my account. All settled. Or so we thought.
"After dinner and visiting the Riverwalk, we arrived at the hotel at about 9:00 PM -- the one my son had made arrangements for -- and were told we had no reservations. This time, having the itinerary with us, we showed them to the manager. Expedia had made reservations for us, same hotel name, same address, same phone number, even the same fax number, same state, but not the same city. Expedia had messed up the reservations. She also confirmed to us that Expedia had called her earlier about these reservations and she had granted them the cancellation at that time. And they had no such policy as 'no-cancel.'
"The hotel manager called Expedia and asked them to cancel the reservations; because she couldn't make new ones for us, otherwise we would get double billed. Expedia refused because it was after the 4:00 PM deadline. Remember, we had made the reservations after 4 PM in the first place. After about an hour, they finally agreed, but only with a penalty of $50. The manager valiantly tried to explain to them it was their mistake and my son should not have get a penalty. She even offered to them to set it up so they wouldn't lose the sale and still receive their commission from the hotel. They still refused. At about 11:00, tired, angry and knowing we had to get up at 4 a.m. for our flight, we just accepted the penalty and got our rooms.
"To make matters worse, upon returning, I received my credit card statement with the full charge of the first hotel. They never canceled those, nor have they credited my account. When we had lost the itinerary, I had expected to pay a penalty for a no-show, but since they had told my son they would credit my card with the amount, I trusted them. And I didn't get a penalty, I got charged the full amount. I don't think anyone in my family will ever again use Expedia for traveling of any kind."
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10:10:58 AM 
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