Expedia customer service sucks, here’s how we hacked it
Usually we book with Orbitz, but for a few flights on the upcoming India trip we used Expedia. Some had to be canceled and rescheduled, luckily only a $20 change fee so no biggie right? Nope, Expedia was a fresh hell.
3 calls. On hold 15-45 minutes. They hung up twice. We’ve got the Skype recordings to prove it!
But wait! A number that accepts collect calls? The inner-internet troll felt vengeful. We called collect with the worst rated, most expensive, prisoner’s collect call service we could Google. They’ll pay this time! We called 1800-expensive-collect from Skype, and then entered the number for Expedia.
Expedia must detect collect calls because an operator answered immediately. They took our details, and then waited on hold for us! Two hours later we got a call back with a confirmation number. Sweet!
Make them pay and to get better service. We’d still be on hold if it weren’t for this ‘hack’.
Image by Qdou, CC BY-SA.
This entry was posted in Editorial, hacks and tagged call service, expedia, hack.
Comments
What is “1800-expensive-collect” ?? how does it work ?
Collect calls are phone calls that charge the recipient for the cost of the call. Usually they’re stupid expensive.
I guess you call collect and either they have to agree to the charges after they put you on hold or they have to accept the charges before they can ask to put you on hold.
Or there is a third option or trick I don’t know about like dialing their 1800 number internationally.
I left a bit out because the story seemed meandering. First we called the 1-800 free number and waited on hold for 45 minutes. Then I called the ‘local’ normal number intended for international calls – I called on Skype so 800 or local is the same price. The local number, which hung up twice after 15 minutes, has an automated recording that says “This number accepts all collect calls” :)
Men! You’ve got to have that idea … Thanks for the trick. Will use it the next time I’m put on hold for more than 30mn and hung over.
“The customer is king/queen…” given lip-service by many, actually demonstrated by few.
Well played!
Ian, whats on your india list ?
http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Global_Geek_Tour_India_2012_schedule
What’s plans for 23′rd? Will you be in Mumbai, or in Bangalore?
We were going to be there at noon but they canceled our flight and moved us to a late one. We won’t be in till late Tuesday now. Probably best to meet up Wednesday morning.
I’m surprised this worked. I called Expedia collect from an international pay phone in the Zurich airport, and only got a message saying “the number you have dialed cannot accept collect calls”.
On this same trip I tried logging on to the American version of their website from the Vienna airport, only to find that expedia.com gets automatically redirected to expedia.at when you’re in Austria. This is true even if you click on the little American flag icon at the bottom of the page, which of course links to expedia.com rather than expedia.us or whatever the non-redirect version of the American site is.
I will not EVER USE EXPEDIA again ever in my life. They are great when you do not need their assistance, but any company would be. When you need their Customer Service, they are absolutely Horrible!
After spending 2hrs 40 min with them on the phone, they were not able to help me in any aspect at all. Their “price guarantee” is full of small print. I have a rewards account with them, but because I used two different emails (both are identical except one is @hotmail and the other is @gmail) they could not merge my rewards.
In short, they have a horrible customer service! I will never use them again and would highly recommend that you DO NOT use their service.
Over a month ago I made a booking for a hotel in Warsaw for June 14 to June 17. The next day We had to make some changes in our itinerary, and I have been trying ever since to cancel that booking. When I had to make an adjustment with Booking.com, the whole thing took five minutes! Interesting!
Here I am on May 13, still with a hotel booked in Warsaw. No-one is ever able to help me make this change, and I am so frustrated. It eats up hours of my time, when I should be working at my computer – on Real work.