erik123

Changes on all these OTAs are a huge problem.

With expedia you have to escalate immediately to a supervisor and ask the supervisor to work on your problem and call you back with a resolution. This will save some time- though they sometimes "forget" to call back.

pfd

Just so I can feel better, I am still trying to get a baggage problem with a Virgin Australia booked through Expedia sorted out. I am in month 3, email number 15 or so and more hours on hold than I would like to record. They have admitted (eventually) in email that the fault was theirs but still haven't resolved the issue. They used to be great years ago, but now I hate them so much and would never use them again for anything, ever. Ever. Ever.

Anonba

I hate to say it but working for BA i realised very quickly that dealing direct with any airline is always best and i told my family and friends this. This was because of the problems ive seen like this where travel agents aren't helpful or refuse to help passengers!

Seemingly the bigger internet travel agents like Expedia etc seem to be the worst offenders in my experience.

In the interests of fairness i will say this:
Smaller high street travel agents rely on customer service and recommendations so i've actually been impressed to the lengths some would go to in making sure their customers had a good experience. This was often just little things like doing pre paid seats or baggage or checking them in online on behalf of customer or even just calling to get information so they didn't have to call BA and wait!


**I would and have only booked with a travel agent if its charter flights as part of a package.

SteveF

The answer to your question is: there isn't one!

I once made the mistake of booking an MEX-CUN flight on Aeromexico via Expedia. The return flight was cancelled, which resulted in me spending much of the last day of my holiday in Mexico speaking to (and shouting at) various Expedia people in an Indian call centre, trying to get them to stick us on the replacement flight (it just had a different number) when a quick call to Aeromexico would have fixed it in minutes. Never again!

livingforever

This is very interesting - I wonder if that's why my flights which get booked through our corporate travel agent only ever pop up for POUG on the return leg and not the outward one.

adrianlondon

I booked a BA flight from Switzerland to Japan a few months ago on lastminute.com as I wanted to pay in GBP and not CHF. The CHF underwent some crazy changes and BA's website (which always charges in the currency where your flight starts from) wasn't reflecting this.

I didn't need to make any changes, but put a request to lastminute.com to get me an emergency exit seat (economy) on the long-haul flight actually run by JAL. They succeeded.

Sam Bee

Because you'd have booked that BA.COM it would have made a massive difference...

You having an issue on MEX-CUN flight on Aeromexico does not equate to why people should only ever book on BA.COM.

The knowledge of most people on Flyertalk vastly outweighs 95% of those who just want to book the cheapest flight. What Expedia does that BA.COM is show people every option on your route, including indirect options, that will in most cases be cheaper than BA. BA.COM doesn't tell people that Emirates are Ł300 cheaper flying to Bangkok..

That and many other reasons.

But if I'm booking a BA point to point revenue ticket, i'll book it on BA.COM despite access to a GDS.

corporate-wage-slave

Just for future reference, you can call BAEC to pay in GBP, the Service Centre will give you a good exchange rate too. The easiest way to do this is to take advantage of the 72 hour reservations hold in forex and then call to pay in sterling. Not all destinations have access to the 72 hour facility, however.

Nikko5

Had a rather un-necessarily long conversation with Expedia's Indian call centre myself this week...

BA schedule change to CPT-LHR resulted in my connecting flight LGW-DUB now being under 3 hours.

Expedia offered me 2 options, a later CPT-LHR flight and a later LGW-DUB connection or an earlier CPT-LHR flight with a connection from Heathrow only, no onward options from Gatwick off the earlier arrival.

My preference was for the earlier CPT-LHR and the later LGW-DUB (deliberately wanted the last leg from LGW for reasons I'm sure those on here will appreciate!)

When I tried a new dummy booking on ba.com the exact flights I wanted were even offered as the cheapest option available!

No dice with Expedia though! I eventually got a supervisor and asked them to actually call BA and see if my preference could be accommodated. To be fair, the following day Expedia e-mailed me with my preferred new itinerary, all finally sorted.

Could not find the original itinerary on ba.com for love nor money, hence making the original booking with Expedia...

HilFly

I had to call BA 5 times this past winter to sort out several complications resulting from snow cancellations and rebookings. 4 times I got through to the Delhi call center. I discovered that quite a few BA agents aren't helpful or refuse to help passengers! On all 4 occasions, the staff were rude, belligerent, and kept insisting that they couldn't do anything. Three times I asked to speak to a supervisor but was told that there was no point in speaking to them because they would only tell me the same thing, and they would not put me through. On the 4th occasion, I got to speak to a supervisor who acknowledged that the member of staff to whom I'd just spoken was wrong, fixed what I was calling about, but was rude anyway! On each of those occasions I was polite, and I was calling about problems of BA's making, but the call center staff were not interested in fixing anything.

The 5th call was answered in Manchester, we had a wonderfully civil conversation, and everything was sorted out in a couple of minutes.

Is it really cheaper to have a call center in India, where the staff not only don't solve problems but annoy the customers as well?

Anonba

Well im from the NCL call centre so i'm of the same opinion and yeah i've taken calls and seen the notes in bookings where people had spoken to DEL first and so i know the kind of stuff they can do unfortunately!
From BAs point of view the DEL staff are simply cheaper than Uk staff....

However if you book direct and speak to NCL or MAN then it will be a better experience than expedia.

Personally i want to help customers and want to find solutions!

chilledflyer

First of all, I just want to say thank you for all your input, suggestions and advice. Dealing with Expedia has definitely tested the limits of my patience. I thought I’d report back with an update.

I rang Expedia again following my original post to see if I could get through to a supervisor who was able to assist with changing the booking. This time, I was quoted a fare difference of close to $10k, which clearly was an error. Again, I pressed for the fare basis and it transpired that I was quoted a CW fare so I gave up. After dealing with Expedia in the last couple of days, I'm surprised why would any business hire staff who are clearly incompetent and inexperienced. One would expect that they would at least provide staff with basic training so that they are able to differentiate Economy, Premium Economy, Business and First fares.

I did manage to find a solution to the issue with BA. I'll report back once the outbound flight has been taken by my client as I don't want to jinx it by disclosing too much at this stage. Paranoid much? I guess I am!

But in brief, I had a long discussion with BA and it seemed to us that Expedia appears to have been interpreting the fare rules incorrectly, in particular the point in relation to the 21 days advance purchase point. As far as BA’s concerned, the 21 days advance purchase rule has been satisfied as they look at the date of purchase (as Globaliser has correctly identified in the relevant section in the fare rules). However, Expedia seem to be under the impression that the fare is no longer valid as we are now less than 21 days from the departure date.

Another interesting point raised was that Expedia claimed they were unable to see any WTP availability whereas BA could. So it raised the question as to whether Expedia have access to the same inventory as BA? We simply do not know. As a general point of interest, does anyone have any insider knowledge of this?

Chilledflyer

Dave Noble

For the fare that you have the rules state

This does assume that it is actually a normal published fare and that this isn't a consolidator fare . If it is, then information in tour code on the ticket may override anything that the displayed fare basis states

Often1

You can use Expedia to find anything you want. We are talking here about booking through Expedia.

Irubi

I have booked via Expedia on a number of occasions - the reason is quite simply that, on the occasions that I have booked with them, they have been MUCH cheaper (I mean by at least $500 and sometimes $2000 or more). That is why

BUT - I have to agree that their customer service line are a true disaster area for flights as they don't know the fair rules, you are kept on hold for hours and have to re-tell the story 15 times! I take this into account when booking with them as C-W-S states that it is a non-changeable ticket.

On the flip side, I had a booking via a local TA a few months ago (to use a GUF1 voucher) - I wanted to change the return AFTER I had flown the outbound. For the final leg, I was willing to downgrade to Y from J (2 class plane) as there was no availability. BA GGL line (who are great) were coming up with $800 for the pleasure.
The TA eventually made the same change for $90. I have no idea how.

But, this shows, as stated upthread, that there is sometimes a real advantage to a real TA!