Expedia - Cruise Travel Agent

When working on our cruise arrangements for our cruise from Boston to Bermuda on Norwegian Majesty, we decided to go with Expedia.com. We figured they would be easy to contact 24 hours a day, and they had a attractive price guarantee. Expedia said in bold letters on every page that their guarantee was great. As long as you called them within 48 hours with a lower price, they would discount your rate to match as well as give you a $50 gift certificate to GiftCertificates.com.

We were aiming for 4 rooms - a double, a triple, and two quads. This was 13 people total - a fairly good sized group. I was to be writing the entire experience from research through booking through travel up for the BellaOnline website. After a great deal of searching around on the web to make sure the rooms were available, my travel agent signed up with Expedia so that she would get her commission. We waited for a response from Expedia. No response. I started making contacts. Nobody could tell us about the affiliate account. I called every number and emailed every email address. No response.

Our agent called at midnight Thursday to verify that the 3 rooms we wanted together were all available (the two quads and triple). They were on Caribbean.

Friday May 8
Friday morning at 10am I decided to use another person's affiliate account to at least get credit for the purchases, and went online to make the room purchases. I did all four together, to verify that there were in fact 4 rooms available. The system said fine - 2 rooms had exact numbers (a quad and triple), while the other quad and double were just 'guarantees'.

When I went to purchase, the exact number rooms went through fine. So those two were "purchased". Unfortunately, the other two came up with a "call in for final details" screen. So I called in. I began to work on the other quad first. It turns out that even though the system SAID they had a room, they didn't actually HAVE a room, it was bait and switch. They now wanted me to upgrade to another floor for the exact same size room for $400 more. I told them the whole point was to have the room on the SAME floor with the others and to move it further away was a bad thing - not a good thing. Never mind paying an additional $400 for the exact same size!

I was on the phone with them for 45 minutes, being transferred around and having to read the itinerary number over to each new person. They now wanted me to pay more and move ALL THREE rooms to a new floor so they could all be together - for $400 or more each - for the exact same sized room. Finally I gave up and said I'd look into other options.

In the meantime, that double still wasn't booked either. So I called back in to ask after the double. The first time I called in, they transferred me twice and then disconnected me. I called back in and went through the series of transfers again. Finally I got to someone who found me in the system. He said that Norwegian normally only releases a few rooms at a time - maybe 6 - to artificially inflate demand and make people buy up to the next level. That maybe if I re-tried booking the room (it was a common, cheap N inner room double) that it would now be available. I tried again, and sure enough, this time it went through. That pretty much solidified for me, that Norwegian was very underhanded in how they deal with buyers.

But at least I had the double booked now. So now I had 3 rooms booked, and 1 in limbo. It was in the Expedia system as being a valid Quad, but Expedia would not honor the purchase. I asked my travel agent to work on this one for me.

In the meantime, as I dug around the internet, I found that CruisesAtCost.com had the exact same double room (guaranteed N) for $1,738 total - all taxes and fees included. I had paid $1,842 to Expedia for that exact same double room, total. So I called in to report this difference of over $100. First they said they had no guarantee at all. I had to prove they had it. Next they told me I had to report it *while making the reservation*. Obviously it says that you can report the difference within 48 hours, so that does not include only when you are making the reservation - especially since the whole point is that you made your reservation online and there is no box to check to say "and I found a cheaper price". Next she said "Oh but we ARE cheaper". I asked how she could claim that. She said that their prices didn't include fees. I told her to click the SELECT button to select that N room and it WOULD show her the taxes and fees included. She said that she had to put me on hold.

We're now 27 minutes into the call. So much for an easy price guarantee. I have had to fight every step of the way with this woman. Finally she comes back and says they will honor the price - my new total is $1753.70 - including the Expedia booking fee. That's fine with me. I ask if they're going to mail me the gift certificate and she says "yes". I will believe that when I see it :)

At this point Expedia did still have the cheapest price on the triple, and nobody had a quad available to compare with.

Saturday May 9
POOF - suddenly the price for the triple on cruisesatcost.com plummeted to $2980.05 - a savings of $176!! I called in to Expedia at noon. This time I got someone who was more savvy about the refund plan. She took the URL name and put me on hold for about 10 minutes. When she came back, she said that I'd had the price dropped by $161 - i.e. the difference minus the $15 Expedia fee. She said I would only get the refund once I'd paid in full. I pointed out that the refund clearly said "If you find a lower rate on another Web site within 48 hours of your booking, and your request is approved, we will discount your balance to match that rate, or we will refund the difference, if you have already paid in full. In addition, we will send you a $50 SuperCertificate from GiftCertificates.com." She insisted her supervisor told her it had to be paid in full first but that the account was definitely noted to give us our refund then. I asked about the gift certificate and she said that would be mailed to me. I got her name - Melanie - and now I have to hope that the account was actually properly noted.

At this point I still have an "original price" quad at $3869.92, and I have 4 people without a room :) After a lot of talking with Jenn and looking through websites, I went with a DD quad room which was exactly one floor over the 2 existing rooms. That way we would be only 30 seconds away from the other rooms, easy to find. The rate at Expedia was $4,249.92 for this room. CruisesAtCost had it for $4,016. I booked it at Expedia.

Now I called in to Expedia to get the rebate based on the cruisesatcost price. I got to the right department, and was hung up on. I called in again and went through the menus. I was hung up on again. I tried yet a third time and got a person. The guy took the URL and put me on hold. I was on hold for 10 minutes, then he came back to complain that I had put the 2 kids in as "children" even though they were 17. I pointed out that they were clearly listed as age 17 - that the only reason it said "child" was to indicate they were not adults and therefore required an adult in the room. I had chosen all the items from drop down menus. I had said each child was "12-17" from the drop down, and then hand-entered both the age 17 and the birthdate. If I had chosen "adult" instead of "12-17" that would have been illegal! So he put me back on hold again. Another 10 minutes passed. He came back on and said he now saw the $4,016 lower price and that he was working with his manager on applying it. I went back on hold. Finally he came back on and said the discount was set and my credit card would be refunded when the cruise was fully paid for. I didn't argue this time and asked about the gift certificate - it would be mailed to me. This was Maurice Brown, x5738.

This leaves is with one original-price room - the first quad - with no discount on it. I now have until Sunday morning to find a better rate. Phone hours are 6am-5pm on weekends.

Wednesday June 8
OK, it's a month later. While they did give us the immediate discount on the double room, they insisted I had to pay in full before I'd see the refunds on the other two rooms (which CLEARLY is against their documentation). In any case I paid in full on 5/18 for all rooms. It says right on their website's documentation that "10. Approved requests will receive credit to their booking credit card within 7-10 business days of approval." So even if we now take that to be from FINAL PAYMENT it is still long past that. I call in. First the agent tells me that I won't see the refund until 5-6 weeks after I get back from the cruise. This apparently is when I will get my gift certificates. I say NO WAY it's already bad enough that I have had to pay off my credit cards with the amount, I am not waiting 4-6 weeks after the cruise for something they promised I would get in 7-10 business days! I had to wait on hold for a while and finally she said she'd call me back in 2 hours with a solution. I did in fact hear back from Expedia, with a full apology, and my refunds were all processed 2 days later.


Layout of Caribbean Deck, for reference in this next section.

Wednesday, June 22
My mother's Guaranteed N (only 2 pink rooms on the entire boat) came in as an "upgrade" to a category L (four light-green rooms). I'm not sure how it is an upgrade, as it is still on the bottom Caribbean deck, still the same tiny interior cabin. In fact N, M, L, and K are *all* tiny interior rooms on Caribbean of the exact same size. The only difference between all for is that SOME K have a double bed. I don't see that L's position is any better than N's. In any case, we had paid $1753.70 total final price for mom's room. Looking today at Expedia, we could get a H Window room for $1742.46. Usually travel agents let you upgrade a room by paying the difference between your current cost and the upgrade's cost. I wanted to know if we could do that, and just do it "sideways" without asking for a credit back.

First I called and spoke to someone who said she was at x5739. The agent said it was impossible to change a room without cancelling it, paying the cancellation fee, and rebooking it. I told her that was not true, that people upgraded rooms quite regularly on cruises. She put me on hold. Next, she said there was a $200/person fee to do any changes. I again said that sounded unusual. She put me on hold again.

Finally, she insisted that we had paid $1694.94 total for that room, i.e. that we'd gotten a $44.38 each refund off of the $1753 initial. I told her that my records showed we had originally paid $1842.46 and gotten the refund from that starting price. Her point being, she felt our current money in was less than the H room. I told her I'd pull the credit card records and call her back. I went through the credit card records. I of course was right - we paid $500 on 5/7 and the remaining $1283.70 on 5/18. That had been our final price INCLUDING all refunds. We never received any additional refund on this room after that point. I tried to call her back, and that extension was not a valid one.

So I called back afresh and got Bruce. He did properly see that we'd paid a final total of $1753 for the room. He thought I was talking about doing a price match and I explained again that this new price for the windowed room H was right on their Expedia site. He said he'd have to call me right back. Fifteen minutes later I got a call from a woman who said she was the supervisor, and that the computer had gone down. I gave them the ticket number again and they said they'd call me right back. Twenty minutes after that, I got a call saying that finally did have the actual story.

Apparently Expedia doesn't honor new prices for existing clients. New prices are only for new clients. The best they could do was to upgrade the room to a category E (i.e. window on a higher deck) for $144.38 per person *additional*. That room currently lists on Expedia for $2042.46. It lists on NCL's website for $1842.46. If we go just with Expedia, $2042-$1753= $289, i.e. $144.5 each. So in essence they won't let you have any upgrades unless it ends up with you paying them more money. They don't care that it's $200 cheaper on NCL's site as we already got our price match of $44@ back when we began because they were slightly overpriced at that time. Therefore, people signing up today can get window rooms for less than we paid for an interior room. That means we've paid a penalty for booking early. Other travel agents will adjust your room price to match as the weeks wear on, but apparently not Expedia - they will only allow you to upgrade if money is involved.

It wouldn't have been as bad if they'd just told me that up front, without coming up with the multiple instances of incorrect information that I had to wade through to get to that.

March 7, 2006
We still didn't have our 3 $50 gift certificates. I called in, talking to Danielle x5637 (case 19138553). She at first didn't believe we were owed gift certificates - but finally she did find the notes. She said they'd be sent. We did get one certificate on 3/17. We bought dinner for one of the triplets with it :). I called on 4/2 to ask about the other 2 and left a message. No response, no action. I called in again on 4/17 and was told that they should have been sent to us, that I should see if I get them by Friday and call back in again if I don't see them.

The moral of the story with Expedia is to do all your research ahead of time and have all the facts laid out plainly. That way when they say "Oh but the refund applied later" or "there's no such thing as a refund", you can explain it out to them. Eventually you will get your refund or an opportunity to upgrade if you wish.

Our Boston to Bermuda Cruise

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