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I just wanted to let consumers know a few things about booking with Expedia.com and Hotels.com. As a vendor, a consumer, traveler etc.

This company is Micro-managed through and through. When you book a room, there are odds that the room itself is not guaranteed. Expedia holds hotels liable to report inventories without checking it themselves. This allows Expedia to oversell your hotel room. In instances much like Hurricane Sandy, Expedia and Hotels combined oversold close to 2000 rooms in the New York area. Never calling to verify if rooms were available. Guest's were not notified of their rooms not being available because Expedia waited for the hotels to call and not Expedia calling to find out first and foremost. Expedia and Hotels.com cares nothing about their clientele. In natural disasters such as tornadoes, fires, and hurricanes, you will be made to pay for any additional expense from your original room, and no refunds or credits will be made for your inconvenience.

The vendors WILL NOT tolerate a third party booking like Expedia, Hotels.com, Priceline, Orbitz and will push them back on the third party to relocate.So if there's a doubt, call and check.

Some hotels are set up with Expedia and do not know it. Please call the hotel on the website for the HOTEL. Not with the Expedia agent or a google search. Please verify with the hotel the dates, room type, any and all maintenance or relevant information before booking the room.Please access the hotel information by search in google from the HOTELS website.

Many 1-800 numbers will leave you calling a call center who will say they are from the hotel but are really selling your room to you through a third party website which is consequently an affiliate program. Many people call on a daily basis, not knowing they had booked with Expedia, and find out later on their checking account reports.

Booking through an agent with the Expedia Affiliate network, Hotels.com or Expedia can be dangerous. I have many friends who work in this department who tell me specifically, "you need to be able to lie to make money." "Oh ma'am, absolutely the room allows pets..", "The hotel will definitely allow you to smoke on the balcony".They will put you on hold and wait for a couple minutes,come back and then lie to you. No remorse, your booking makes them a percentage. They're already making 9.00 an hour and do not really care if you book or not. Make the agent give you a name of someone, a call back number for verification to the hotel and put them on hold while you check. Make that agent work for you.

While you spent Hours, Days, Months and other precious time to book that PERFECT room. Yes you guessed it, the room is not guaranteed. Expedia and other third parties may give you a "confirmation number" however, this is not in direct correlation to your hotel room. Please make sure to call the hotel 30 minutes after your booking. Odds are 25-30 percent of the time the room will not be available.

The system itself is designed to notify the hotel of your booking. However a lot of hotels are fed up with third parties. Leaving you with the worst of the worst, the last one available. The hotels will attempt to sell to walk in reservations and others before honoring your room.

I have taken these calls from hotels all over the country who state " we have a full house, I know its confirmed we're just not going to take the reservations." Especially when the rates are incorrect or messed up.

Does that rate look too good to be true? It probably is. Most Wyndham hotels now are being set up on third party websites with specific promotions and rates that the hotel sometimes do not know are in their system. Until the day you show up, the hotel is only getting 30 dollars for your room when their walk in rate alone is over 100. Many Super 8's, Days Inn's and other newly acquired Wyndham properties have this issue. The hotel will be sending your reservation to Expedia to be relocated.

If you are one of the lucky few to be relocated.Do not let the agents tell you, "well I can offer you a 100 voucher, and a 25.00 refund." This is your vacation! They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on relocation's that are Expedia.com and Hotels.com's fault. Make them pay more. They have the over ride capability from their supervisors. This travel voucher and refund are their way of just keeping you quiet so you go away quietly. These agents are getting rated on their performance with your relocation. Yes, this department is specifically for relocation's. Yours is not an isolated incident. There are thousands of people almost every weekend with this same issue.

Expedia can avoid the legality of them overselling the hotel by showing the hotel that they did not close their inventory. There is a clause in the contract with this third party that allows Expedia to blame the hotel. If only Expedia would exercise its brain and look further into the system and fix these issues, your vacation would not be interrupted.

As for the vendors, you guys really have the brunt of the mess. Neither Expedia or Hotels.com has a back up system that monitors your inventory. Its only based upon the number of rooms you sell. Think twice about agreeing to an open policy where Expedia can sell past your allotted inventory to them per day.

Got a pay dispute on your invoice? Well you get to talk to one of these lovely cross trained agents who may have just gotten off a relocation and had been screamed at for about 30 minutes for screwing up someones vacation. Most of these agents have no history of accounting, cannot see what you see and will most likely be sending a one liner to financial operations. "Hotel needs to be paid for the reservation, and is disputing the short pay on their remittance." No names, no booking information and then you're stuck waiting, explaining through an agent on email (who will NEVER CALL you)to work things out. All the while the agent you're speaking to wouldn't know about balancing the hotels books much less their own check books.

If you're a corporate entity hotel (Marriott, Hilton, IHG, Wyndham) make sure you get access to the extranet. Perform your close outs on Friday and train your staff to say nothing to agents who call. Make sure to just take up disputes with your market managing team. If you can get a hold of them. I've had a hotel manager on my phone one day and the market manager is sitting there ignoring the conversation.

The rule about Expedia being the last third party to close out your inventory is based upon a stipulation made by the company. Its not a federal law, its Expedia's rule. The only reason its still in effect is because no other third party has come along to dispute it.

The most frustrating part of all of this issue is the Customer Care department that Expedia and Hotels.com has so generously outsourced to the Phillipines. These agents are making about 350 a month to answer your calls. They do not understand your concern and will constantly attempt to say anything so they can get their averages down and not lose their job.

EVERY ONE of the agents you speak with at Expedia are being rated to keep calls under 600 seconds. To take less than 6 percent in cancellations, and to make your relocation as cheap as possible, sometimes no more than 150 percent per room of the original price can be spent. They cannot ask you for more money to pay for it. Their 100 voucher for traveling is not specific to your case or issue, its a tool used to keep you from escalating and coming back.

With that being said, double check on your reservation, you'll have close to 10 minutes to make the next decision you spent hours, days maybe weeks on making. Make sure to get more for your money.

Monetary Loss: $250.

Location: Springfield, Missouri

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Guest

Let us just put it this way.

First of, you have to understand that this is "business". Same as other products that is being sold to you, it needs to have a department that caters to all of the complaints and feedback.

And this department is very popular all over the world, it is called Customer Service Department.

Travel Agency is unfortunately an affluent business. And hotels, airlines, car rental companies, cruise lines needed them to generate incomes from consumers. If you are a guest, and would like not to go through these hassles, contact the hotel and compile all of their contact info's from reservations phone number to fax to email. There are times, that you will automatically be opted in to 3rd party reservations, EVEN if you visit the actual hotel's website.

That is an agreement, whether you like it or not.

Another one though, Hilton hotels for example; have memberships. So if you book through a 3rd party, and the hiltons fully booked for the certain dates, then a Diamond member called, they WILL find a way to get rid of someone just to accommodate this member. That is another cause of relocation. And they won't say it.

Again it is business.

Another reason for relocation is a compression. It is advisable that you book in advance.

Call center agents' job, whether they are from a pile of *** workers to a grand-righteous country, is just all the same. Relocating is never an easy task.

So if you guy's would like to have a heavenly perfect reservation, my recommendation, boycott third party reservations, and make it disappear forever. You have no idea how it will make it sooooo eassyyyyy for some agents...

LOL! Good Luck!

Guest

Cool post very informative. I just found your site and read through a few posts although this is my first comment, i'll be including it in my favorites and visit again for sure

Guest

good information just let me add:

call centers Cebu, Manila and El Salvador

Phillipines pays $350 El Salvador pays $500

Phillipines has more agents and the sales deparment is on manila and cebu if they book a reservation wrong they transfer the call to El Salvador the call center there only have like 60 agents and 15 supervisors, there are more agents on the phillipines and they are worse than us (SAL)

tier 1 (customer care) can give a coupon for $50 or $25

tier 2 (sup) can give $100 coupon and refunds up to $300

tier 3 (managers located on las vegas) they can listen to any call and decide to give all the money back they are the higher tier and the only way to get thru them is by asking for a sup 2 times.

hotels calls has to last less than 8 minutes

flight calls has to last less than 9 minutes

package calls has to last less than 10 minutes

sales agents gets comision thats why they lie

customer care agents they dont get comision if you make the booking with customer care they will tell you the true because we really dont care if you buy or not since the call will be longer.

if the hotel is sold out or they dont have the reservation the call is transferred to lodgings operations 877397**** press 1 and they are the relocation agents they are from the united states so they are not very friendly they make relocations and if the relocations is not good they provide refund and $100 voucher.

High hold time is because of the few agents that are available since the start of the shift is call after call with no time to rest after each call, I really hate expedia their customers the managers from the corporate office I have already resigned from that account and now I'm working with Zinga were the pay is better and work is more funny just answering emails.

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