the declining quality of Expedia

Not all of my friends agree with me, but I’ve noticed a definite decline in quality at Expedia, Microsoft’s highly visible online travel booking service.

Over the years I started using them more and more, simply because I like booking tickets myself rather than waiting several days to hear back from a travel agent. As you all know, I travel quite a lot, and it wasn’t long before I found myself in some elite traveller category designation at Expedia.

But they’ve really been getting worse, I’m quite sure of it.

The most recent example is that they recently sent me a “reminder” about my upcoming trip on Tuesday, and this reminder included a 4:40 AM flight from Cairo to Amsterdam. The problem is, those 4:40 AM KLM flights out of Cairo have not existed since the revolution, for curfew reasons. They’re all 3:00 PM flights now, and Expedia doesn’t seem to have any awareness of this. The only reason I remembered it is because KLM phoned my listed U.S. telephone and left a message on my parents’ answering machine, which they later told me about. How can Expedia not be in the know about a global KLM Cairo policy that has been in place for 3-4 months?

But that’s not even the worst of it. What I really detest is Expedia’s little quirk of sending emails just minutes before your flight that say: “There have been important changes to your itinerary and your airline may have limited options in helping you. Your ticket is now frozen until you phone one of Expedia’s customer service representatives and make alternative plans.”

This is simply infuriating, especially for someone like me who generally travels with email access but not a cell phone (simply because Vodafone Egypt robs us blind on roaming charges and I won’t get burned a third time on that, so I always leave my phone behind in Egypt).

Last December was the worst such case. I was in one of those hours-long snowstorm ticket lines at Charles de Gaulle Airport and got one of those stupid messages from Expedia. I wasn’t about to lose my place in that endless line only to go to a payphone and learn Expedia’s news, which is usually something infuriatingly trivial like: “your flight time is now 7 minutes later than announced” (I’m serious).

Anyway, I’m planning to phase them out. What’s a better online booking system? Anyone out there use one that they’re satisfied with?