Do not book with Expedia or Priceline.

They do refuse to follow rules published by the airline. Which I think is bigger than usual travel mess now.

I felt like this is something worth sharing explicitly. I have used OTA either due payment processing issues on airlines sites, ability to price complex tickets etc, however until (my very productive 😊 ) today, I have not learned such thing for various agents at various OTAs which my, or maybe not, has been know to community. Better twice then never.

I had disagreement about interpretation, which was usual situation and when escalated to the airline, usually it was solved. However, after two unsuccessful attempts of not so complicated cases, I started asking questions, only to learn that within those 2-3 hours on call, no one care to confirm with the airline as “we are not allowed to call the airline without management approval.” So I inquired to get approval and in response was told the supervisor again did not give approval to escalated, clearly despite the disagreement that can only be approved by the airline TA support desk.