Expedia.com
 

In most of our trips, we booked the hotels via Booking.com or Venere.com, and bought separately the flight tickets.

One friend recommended me Expedia.com, where you can book hotel + flight, even flight + hotels in more than one city. He said that is cheaper.

I would like to know if there are Fodorites who used Expedia and what they think about it?
Do you have to pay all (hotels and flight) at the time of booking, or only the flight and then pay for hotel directly when you arrive there?

I have rarely found Expedia to be cheaper than other sites, in fact quite the ooposite.

Ive used Expedia flight & hotel packages countless times, and find them good. I have not used them to Europe as I have never found their packages competitive for my European destinations. If you buy a package, you pay for flight/hotel with most if not all fees & taxes upfront

If you search around, like Bradsdeals, you can sometimes find coupons for Expedia. In one case I received $350 off an already good deal to Hawaii

I've used Expedia and Travelocity for my last two trips to Europe. I went to London and Paris, somewhat last minute :) For London, I booked on a Sunday to go next Thursday.

Is it cheaper...well, for London, I had a superb hotel at a price I thought was cheap. For Paris, I wanted a hotel out of the centre, and they had one that, once again, I thought was a good price.

If I was planning a trip far ahead of time, I would probably do it on my own.

Their selection does not always include hotels I would want to use in Paris, for example.

A couple years back we bought an airline ticket (Split to Palermo via Rome) through Expedia well ahead of the trip. Some months on they announced that Alitalia had gone bankrupt and our tickets were void. End of story. Despite my pleas, no money back, no alternate booking. And, although shaky, Alitalia is still in business.

Through the kindness of Croatia Airlines and its employees, we were able to use the cancelled ticket on the first leg of our flight. We bought a ticket on another sirline for the Rome to Palermo leg.

Now that I think about it, some years back my son flew home for Christmas on a ticket bought through Expedia. They neglected to inform him that a flight on one leg of his returned had been cancelled. A day or so before he left, he checked on his reservation and had to scramble around and find an alternate routing during a busy time of year.

Moral: avoid Expedia. And always check on your flights a few days ahead of time.

Expedia is one of many booking services around. Sometimes they are cheaper sometimes not so always do comparative shopping. For European hotels ans apts I use local booking services (based in the country of travel) which most of the time turn out better deals. I did book my transatlantic and one inter European flight with Expedia this year and everything was fine. They did email me schedule changes.

If airline goes bust or flight is canceled Expedia (and any other online service for that matter) is not responsible for refunds. They pass the money to carrier and take their cut. Here in Ontario by law they are required to register with a compensation fund so claims can go there. Sometimes credit card companies refund some or all monies lost in case of airline bankruptcies.

Most of discount European airlines (Easyjet, etc) are not on Expedia at all.

Two weeks ago I bought flight tickets to Athens and I booked a hotel with Booking.com.
Now, after I saw your question, I checked in Expedia how much is the same flight + the same hotel. It is ~ 100$ more, per person.And the price for hotel is non refundable, while what I took with Booking.com can be changed / canceled without penalty till 24 h before arrival date.

Don't use Expedia. I have used them for years with no problem. This last week we had a hotel issue and I did the online customer form help form from Expedia. The response from Expedia was that I needed to call customer service. I have spent 2 hours on hold this morning and 3 hours on hold this afternoon. No one ever answered. The one time I got a person (who transferred me and then no one ever came) he could barely speak English. If you are in need of urgent help with airline or hotel they are not for you. You cannot get real person help.
Since I have had this problem, I have been reading about many others having problems with customer service. We had a hotel room flood and the hotel said they could only refund via Expedia. Much better to book directly with hotel and airlines.

Thank you for info.
You all convinced me that Expedia is not for me!

I would like to add my .02 to this as well. Today my mom, sister and I were to supposed to fly from DFW to Chicago and then Chicago to Zurich. I had booked our tickets with Expedia.com. Ever since booking with them, I would receive an email update if there was some sort of change and then file it away in an email folder for our trip. The last email I got was on 4/30. Yesterday I decided to double check my itinerary online and it showed us leaving at 2p from DFW when the last email I received indicated 2:30p. This morning I called them up, only to discover that both flights were canceled! They were able to book us on Air Canada for tomorrow for both flights, but I've now lost a day in the apartment we're renting.

I spent 4 1/2 hours on the phone and finally got to talk to someone in management (and I use that loosely). They informed me that emails had been sent back in May, June and also yesterday, but this was a total lie. Why? Because any email from them would have the subject of "change to your itinerary" and I would have most certainly kept this email. According to the person I spoke to, they said that these emails had advised me of the flights being canceled. Another lie as my sister called Swiss Air and they said that the flight from Chicago to Zurich was still flying out this evening, not to mention that United flight (the flight from DFW to Chicago, being operated by Swiss) had two more flights leaving from DFW today. So, if the DFW leg had been canceled, then they should have rebooked me on one of the later flights.

The person at Expedia said that the emails sent out were automatically generated and that he was unable to forward them to me, so I requested he take a screen shot of his screen and send it to me (he hasn't and I have a feeling I'll never see that email).

Am I mad? You bet. I really do believe they dropped the ball on this and are not taking ownership of this. Apparently they won't give out their last name (only the first letter of the last name and/or employee badge number), so filing this complaint will be interesting. This is the first and last time I will use their service and I will strongly discourage others from using it as well.

sorry to hear some posters have had bad experiences with Expedia.
I have used their services a number of times to book flights and hotels without any problems..