I lost more than $7000 just last year as a direct consequence of booking flights on Expedia that I had to cancel (personal reasons). I learned in the process that buying on Expedia instead of directly from the airline not only complicates things (you can't manage many aspects of your flights on the airline's website, they just give you messages about "contact your travel agent") but your options and conditions are often worse than booking with the airline directly. My financial loss was due to the fact that Expedia was inserted in the middle between me and the airline, adding zero value but resulting in endless finger pointing (Expedia: the airline's policies don't allow us to do that. Airline: Talk to Expedia, since you booked through them, only they can do that), tickets that would normally be refundable, being non-refundable (at the same fare), and changes and refunds where allowed, taking forever, being incredibly complicated and in one case, losing my money entirely because Expedia made a stupid mistake. Oh, and don't even get me started how Expedia support agents are all talk no action - I was given conflicting information from different service reps, one making a mistake and the next one blaming me for it, lip service, promises, pretended understanding, promising follow-up assurances of things they would do, etc. but the only thing that was consistent was NEVER following up, NEVER keeping their promises and NEVER, ever solving anything, other than the most basic stuff - and even then a change that would take 2 minutes on the airline's websites becomes a 2 hour chat with an agent that has the IQ of a doorknob and takes 5 minutes to pull up your info and then 5 minutes each time you ask a question and they need to "look into it". They also made a ticket change last December on an international flight changing my flight from Business to Economy (and "verifying and confirming" that it was booked in Business... just for me to find out from the ticket change email that I got a free downgrade from Biz to Economy. And that one (and I am not exaggerating) took 7 hours (!!!) on the phone with them to fix it. They refused to fix it for 6.5 hours telling me that the only option was to give me a refund and then I would have to buy a new ticket (for double the price compared to my original ticket that they messed up), and then finally they fixed it in half an hour, but not until I screamed at them for an hour about it. Summary: NEVER, EVER will I book a flight on Expedia again, not if my life depends on it. Direct with airlines only. I fly internationally about 20-30 times a year and it made a world of difference to stop booking flights on Expedia. It's night and day. Last year, I booked all my flights on Expedia. Result: $7000 loss (could have been prevented by booking with the airlines), DAYS, yes, literally days on phone and chat with Expedia, i.e. a tremendous amount of money and time (= life) lost. This year, airline direct bookings only - almost everything is smooth, other than the occasional hiccup, which is quickly solved, no issues whatsoever. I still book hotels on Expedia, that works great. But flights - never again.