About 6PM EST booked a Hilton hotel in London for 1 cent per night. In fact, all hotels on Expedia were showing that rate. After booking the hotel, was able to add theatre tickets, tours, etc. all listed as "Free." Printed the vouchers and ready to go. Shortly thereafter, Expedia pulled the hotel portion of their website offline. Waiting to see what happens with my 4 nights in London booked for 4 cents.

Good Catch!

They must have pulled it pretty quick. Not working as of 9:30 Pm.

Let us know if they honor it.

Jayson

Yesterday afternoon, I also made a $0.01 cent reservation for a London hotel on Expedia. I actually made two reservations after deciding to stay at a different hotel. This morning, I canceled the first reservation (and kept the other reservation). Without my consent, Expedia canceled both reservations.

I purchased this on their website. Expedia does not have the right to cancel my reservation without my consent. I've contacted them about restoring my reservation (the one I never canceled).

Expedia called me back and said that they are investigating. They told me that they do not yet have any directive as to how to handle this, but that they will get back to me in a week. The Expedia representative indicated that they may, in fact, honor the reservation at the price for which I booked it, and as such, they told me not to make a new reservation at this point. With a company as reputable as Expedia, I'm hopeful they do the right thing.

I will keep you posted.

Oh, that's funny.

Have you read their terms of service? Does it say anything about typos or price mistakes?

Companies cancel orders all the time when their websites act up and give ridiculously low, or free, prices.

good luck to all that got in on this one

dear mintwax,

Welcome to Flyertalk!!!

Sorry you've been given a hard time over your post. Although Expedia run a very successful marketing campaign with the aim of assuring customers that they are a trustworthy and reputable company, many here have learnt of a series of blunders over the past few years and seen messy, incompetent and, at times, downright sneaky tactics by Expedia when they figure out what went wrong, how much the error might cost them, and the ensuing PR wreck as they attempt to rectify their account sheets.

Sometimes the fiasco is sorted out in a few days.

Sometimes it takes months.

There are a good many threads to reflect all the scenarios.

Some of us are involved from the beginning, and have a real stake in the issue.

Some of us don't, yet get drawn, mesmerised, to these meandering never ending threads full of threats, despair, angst and recriminations - the FT version of a Jerry Springer Show (with plenty of Judge Judy mixed in). Oh, the drama of it all!

Anyway, there is another thread starting in perhaps this topic's rightful home.

You can follow it here: http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=651534

(This particular thread may get lost very quickly as Travelbuzz moves at a much faster pace).

I personally will be very grateful if you could keep us informed, mintwax.


(I get a bit addicted to these threads myself, I'm ashamed to say. Perhaps I should change my handle to Yajiuma...)

LapLap,

Thanks for the response. Yes, I'm new to this forum (but not to travel). I see that many have a negative view of Expedia. Let's hope they give me a positive impression and give me a reason to be a big Expedia fan.

I will certainly keep you updated.

It sounds like Expedia will claim this was a pricing mistake.

The challenge is that it's not possible to tell at booking-time whether an 0.01 fare is a mistake or not. As we all know, airlines/hotels frequently do this intentionally, so you just book one and hope it is later decided that the fare is legit.

kniveton,

I see nothing about such errors on their terms of service. In any event, regardless of their terms of service, they should be willing to honor a price quote from their website. It's just good business and customer relations.

The LA Times once wrote an article about the impact of FlyerTalk users spreading news of Expedia pricing mistakes.

http://www.latimes.com/travel/column...3,print.column

I'll hazard to guess that you've never dealt with Expedia on mispricing issues before. Last time they ceremoniously deleted my itinerary, it took 6+ hours on the phone, four CS reps and a rep from their consumer advocacy group to sort things out. Boy was that fun.

I got in on this too, though my reservations aren't until the end of May/start of June. Got confirmation e-mails, lots of screenprints, and tried calling and e-mailing Expedia to get them to personally confirm it. When I called (which was while their site was down), they said they couldn't look up any hotel reservations because the portion of their system that deals with hotels was down for "upgrades."

Anyway, I'd read elsewhere regarding the Expedia/Hilton debacle and saw mention that in that situation, they seemed to be more likely to honor reservations of people that called/e-mailed to confirm their itinerary. Thought it was worth a shot.

Currently, my reservations are still showing as active. Hopefully, they'll stay that way!