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Join Date: Feb 2010
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I think this is essentially Expedia's SOP, and an SOP shared with other flight booking companies. I'm not sure contacting Expedia within 24 hours would have helped your daughter either. In the case of Expedia (but not some other OTA) I very much doubt she saved any money, it's just a massively easier interface to book on compared to dear old BA.com. But booking with BA.com would have given advantages including name correction / changes in the first 24 hours. I hope I'm not coming over all #Angela-esque.
She probably has 3 choices plus two just-in-case options.
- Throw in the ticket, buy a new one, get whatever refund Expedia allows (which could be nothing). Book a new ticket, more carefully
- Go to the airport, say nothing, see if they pick it up at check-in and perhaps pay a change fee to AA.
- Go HBO, turn up at the gate late in the process (APIS should have cleared her already), on the LHR scanners it is just the family name that comes up, so it's unlkely to be spotted at this point. However with AA you have to go through a security interview , you can do this at the gate but AA do everything they can to avoid this. That interview isn't about the ticket, it's about detecting whether her reason for travel is trustworthy.
The two sub-variants are:
- if the flight is someway off, AA may well change the flight timings. If so this may allow a free cancelaltion or credit note.
- if you do end up being pinged for a lot of money she can investigate the Consumer Rights Act (see Dashboard thread) to see if this is an unbalanced piece of the contract.