Dear Expedia,

I’m writing to you in regard to your recent decision to invalidate all £40 Refer-A-Friend vouchers issued prior to the change of terms and conditions to include minimum spending.

As a frequent traveler and self-proclaimed awesome deal finder, many of my friends and family members always come to me for advice on how to find the best ways to travel without spending a fortune. When I first learned about the Expedia.co.uk’s Refer-A-Friend promotion 3 months ago, I was very glad to be a participant. Over the last couple months, I’ve made many new referrals for your site on the good faith that Expedia would uphold the T&C of the Refer-A-Friend program.

I was disappointed to find out that all the £40 vouchers I’ve earned (prior to the change of T&C to include minimum spending) are now voided. I’m even more disappointed to see the “too bad, we have the final saying” attitude Expedia has toward this matter. While Expedia has the rights to amend the T&C of the program at any time, it’s rather unethical and extremely bad business practice to entice your loyal customers to help bring business to Expedia with promise of vouchers then not fulfilling that promise.

The way I look at it, Expedia has two choices here to set things right. One, honor all the vouchers earned by me and others like me under the T&C at the time referrals were made. Or two, Expedia can refund all the past earnings (and maybe even future earnings) from the referrals made by me and others like me.

I understand that us customers may not have any legal claims to those vouchers. But what we do have is the choice of where we spend money when making our future travel bookings. Personally, I only spend about $30K on travelling annually. But I’m a member of several most popular online travel forums with reach over thousands and thousands other like minded frequent travelers. I’m certain Expedia understands the power of viral marketing. Word of mouths works both ways. What would happen if all the frequent travelers and their friends and families become aware of the deceitful business practice Expedia employed to exploit its loyal customers?

I’ve purchased the domain www.Expedia-Unrefer-A-Friend.com. I plan to dedicate this site to inform the public about how Expedia has used the Refer-A-Friend program to get its loyal customers to gain new business but then bait-n-switch’ed us once we held up our end of the bargain. I’d strongly recommend Expedia to reconsider its decisions and honor its words to its customers by Midnight August 15th. If I do not see Expedia taking any steps toward remedying the situation by that time, I’ll have no choice but to launch the website. After that, this website will be publicized on all the most popular online travel forums. And with the help of social networking sites, travel forums, travel blogs, etc, I’ll personally ensure this website is referred to all my friends, friends of my friends, other frequent travelers, and all their friends. Maybe I can even earn some referral money from Orbitz, Travelocity, and Priceline. Does Expedia really want to find out how well reverse viral marketing work? It’s up to you.

I’m not including my Expedia account or my voucher codes with this email because I’m not doing this for myself. I make enough money that losing a few of £40 voucher won’t really make a dent in my bank account. I’m doing this for all the loyal Expedia customers who participated in the Refer-A-Friend program and brought in god knows how much new business for Expedia. I’m doing this for the integrity of the online traveling business. Because without credibility, we have nothing.

Sincerely,

-A disappointed Expedia customer
(NW Gold Elite/DL Gold Medallion/Hyatt Gold Platinum member/Omni Platinum SelectedGuest)