Originally Posted by
doe3001
2) Reputation? EXPEDIA’s reputation is already horrible. (THis is a search for "
EXPEDIA complaints" in Google) They don’t care about bad publicity. People will soon forget and there always new customers. Take as example the HILTON affair in 2005: The people that made reservations at the Ritz in 2006 probably didn’t know about that. Or were greedy (and easy prey for scammers).
I'm not trying to defend Expedia or any other Online Travel Agency. But, if you if you take some time to actually read the complaints you find online, you'll see that many of them are actually complaints about the hotel/airline/cruise line and not Expedia. Or, the traveler didn't take the time to read the policies. A summary of a few examples:
- Upon arrival, we decided the hotel booked wasn't good enough but Expedia refused to refund our money.
- I purchased travel insurance through Expedia but couldn't get my money back without a doctor's note when my husband got sick.
- The hotel gave me a handicap accessible room.
- A Canadian booked on the US Expedia website and complained she or he was charged in US dollars.
- The shared-ride shuttle service dropped the travelers off at the wrong Hilton.
- Car rented in a foreign country and the rental company insisted on proof of insurance.
- The airline charged a baggage fee.
Of course, none of that answers your question of whether Expedia knowingly scams their customers through an elaborate mistake rate scheme. My gut says no, simply because the labor costs associated with dealing with the scheme would likely cost more than the money they might receive.
I'd apply Occam's Razor. Rather than a criminal fraud scheme, it's something like poorly designed software. In certain circumstances, the software that Expedia uses to enter or verify information defaults to $0.01.