LostInTrance

EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED and frustrated with Expedia and their attempts at making me pay for goof ups by their customer service and ticketing teams. Pasting my experience below and seeking feedback on further action I can take to get Expedia review their decision and get a fair refund.

I called in to Expedia customer service on July 25th to change my existing itinerary (change of outbound flight dates from July 29 to Aug 5 for booking ref******, I agreed on all the changes to the itinerary and the cost of making the change (HKD 1050) with the Expedia agent and got the confirmed itinerary emailed to me. I gave my credit card details and the agent said the details will be forwarded to the ticketing team and ticket will be issued in a few hours. If there was any change from this point onwards, I would expect Expedia to contact me immediately and resolve it.
Having received no email confirmation, I called in to Expedia a couple of days later and after spending considerable time with an agent I was told that the ticket was not issued due to some issue with the credit card transaction. The agent initially said there was no problem with the booking! I gave the card and contact details again and asked the agent to call me back immediately if there was any issue. I was promised that they would call me if there was any issue - however, this never happened. There was no email, no call, no message.
After a few days, I called in again to ask for a status and the agent again told me that the booking is looking fine. After spending another hour with the agent and explaining the whole story again and even more investigation, to my utter disbelief I was told again that there was a problem with the credit card transaction again.
This time, I was informed that Expedia is unable to keep the itinerary promised previously (1-stop) and that for a new itinerary (2-stops) I will now need to pay a total of HKD 4289. And to top this, I had 15 minutes to agree to this rate or risk the fares going up even higher. The agent who I spoke to strongly suggested that I take up this offer in order to avoid travel disruption and at the same time open a case for the excess amount to be refunded. Given my status (I was returning to HK after a major surgery, rejoining work after 3 weeks leave, traveling with my wife who was 4 months pregnant) I agreed to this and made the payment.
After my return to HK, I have been following up multiple times with Expedia customer support for an update on the case and after 3 or 4 follow ups, I received a call today from a supervisor who told me that my case was being dismissed as the ticketing team has declined the claim citing credit card declines. I asked to speak with a manager but this request was also summarily dismissed saying she was one of the supervisors and I was informed, rather curtly, that regardless how many times I would call in, this decision will not change and I would get the same response.

1. Why wasn't there any attempt to contact me immediately if there was an issue with the card? Despite the issue occurring twice, I have never received a call or an email or a text from Expedia to inform me of this issue despite requesting to do this explicitly the second time. Why is that? What if I had taken the confirmation email to the airport with my family only to find that there was no seat on the aircraft?

2. Expedia say that the credit card was declined multiple times - but they are not ready to provide any proof. My credit card company has not received even an ATTEMPTED transaction from Expedia for this amount. My card has been in good standing and I have been able to use my card throughout my travel in this period and have the records to prove it. My credit card company confirmed to me that there was no fraud alert or any block on the card.

3. On what ground has the ticketing team denied the refund? On 2 occasions, they have faced an issue with the credit card transaction and have sat on it while the fares went up. If they had contacted me immediately, I could have called my credit card or used another card or tried something else which could have cost me far less that it eventually did. I've had to call in to get an update both times. If I had called a few hours later, the fares would have gone up even higher and I would have had to pay even more. To me this is borderline unethical practice to make the customer pay more for a delay that was caused due to sheer negligence and lack of ownership on their side.

4. After I called in the second time and the agent realised that the tickets were not issued, I received an email from Expedia as I was on the phone with the agent. The email said: "We have received notice from Air India that they have:
* Cancelled 2 of your flights. Expedia .com .hk has updated your itinerary based on the changes provided by the airline."
This verbiage is completely misleading and incorrect. Air India did not cancel my flights, Expedia did. Why is this worded in a manner that is confusing and incorrect?

5. The last time I called and was quoted HKD 4289 to make the changes, I was given a deadline of 15 minutes to agree to the fare. Why was this ultimatum given to me in this instance and not during the first time I called in?

6. Why do the agents take such a long time to figure out what is going on with a booking? Every time I called in, the agent initially said the booking is fine. I had to explain the scenario in detail for them to locate the issue with the ticket issuing. This is unbelievably bad customer service and reeks of a lack of minimum expected level of system knowledge. Extremely frustrating for the customer to be explaining to the agent what they should be looking for.

I have gone through a LOT of frustration, pain and spent considerable hours on the phone with the agents trying to work this out with little outcome in my favour. The whole ordeal has resulted in a lot of stress to me and family and the loss of money just adds to the insult. I have been an Expedia member and customer for more than 10 years now and is a silver+ status holder at the moment. What is the best way forward for me to get this resolved?

Appreciate your responses!