I learned a couple of things about Expedia this week. Many of you probably already know about these, but for anyone who doesn't:

1. Expedia tends to list fare options in a way that seems absolutely committed to presenting the lowest price first, even to the extent of completely ignoring my request for flights at specific times of day (they do stick to the requested date, at least) and sometimes presenting 3-connection options if they're a couple of dollars cheaper than direct flights. So in the past I've assumed that the lowest price they present after the initial search for an itinerary is in fact the cheapest way they've found that I can get from A to B and back. But in this case, my needs were a little more complex. Instead of needing A-B-C/C-B-A, where the "/" is a stay or stopover, what I needed was A-B/B-C/C-B-A. Expedia's initial results were $906, but none of them worked for the schedule I needed. However, I could see flights that were components of the various offerings that, combined individually, would give me the schedule I needed. So I tried the "select flights individually" option. I figured that, since the specific combination I needed wasn't listed, that must mean that my combination of segments would cost more than $906, perhaps a lot more. But lo and behold, when I put together the segments I wanted, the price was $770!

The moral: In some cases it may be worth reassembling your intinerary using the "choose flights individually" option.

2. Once upon a time it was worth looking at sites like Expedia to find airfare and hotel rates better than those you could get directly with the airline or hotel itself. And I know Expedia has restricted prices at hotels that can still be better than the hotel's unrestricted rates in some cases, but in general I had come to assume that for an unrestricted rate, I could usually get a price from the airline or hotel that is the same as or a slightly better than I could with Expedia et al. But recently I had the dubious joy of booking four flights on Alitalia. As mentioned above, Expedia gave me a price of $770 for the four flights. Alitalia's price for the exact same itinerary and class: $1,703.

The moral: Just because it's the airline's or hotel's home site doesn't mean they have a best rate guarantee, even now.