Expedia, go to hell.

[Skittles88]

Any desk clerk knows how bad of a company the big E can be. For everyone else, lets just say they are utterly stupid. They don't care about the hotels they are booking for, or the customers, and only the money that goes in their pockets.

EA: Expedia agent
Me: Far to busy for this kind of ****

In the middle of a rush tonight, I get a phone call.

Me: Thank your for calling [hotel], my name is Skittles, how may I assist you?
EA: Yes hi I am calling from Expedia and I had a question. A customer is booking for tonight and would like to know if it would be alright to book the name as her company name? For tax purposes.
Me: Oh uhh one second *looks at screen, sees 0 rooms, realize coworker is booking the last room* I'm very sorry sir, that last room is not available anymore; my coworker has just booked it.
EA: I see. I still would like to know if she can use her company name.
Me: Sir it does not matter, that room is unbookable. The guest will not have a room.
EA: *reiterates same thing, different wording* We can see rooms availiable on my screen.
Me: *wondering if this guy is that stupid, or maybe I misheard the day* This is for tonight?
EA: Yes.
Me: You can NOT book that room. It will not be here and we will have to walk the guest. Do NOT overbook this hotel. (Side note: since the room is now booked on our end, it should not allow them to book, but because his system was still showing the room, who knows if it could glitch).
EA: *still not getting it*
Me: *fed up, I raise my voice* Look sir you CAN NOT book that room somebody else got it first. DO NOT overbook my hotel. Do NOT book that room or I will make a LOT of noise to corporate about you. I will NOT walk a guest. GOOD BYE *very loudly hang up the phone*

The guest standing there waiting for pool towels smiled widely at me and told me I had handled that well. I apologized to her for making a bit of a scene but she waved it off.

I don't even know how he could not understand what I was saying. Maybe he thought i was lying or something.

*an aside for non hotel people* Walking a guest means we have sold a room that had a credit card guarantee from a different guest. We than have to refund the guest that has now showed up for a room that doesn't exist anymore, and pay for their first night stay at a similar hotel in the area.
We've only had to walk a person once, and only because a clerk gaped out and forgot to make up a reservation for a railway worker staying on his company's dime.

[figgyx]

Yep gotta agree

I work audit at a small motel. One night this woman came in on the shift before mine and attempted to check in. There were very few rooms available and she did not like her choices.

If you were thinking she left and seeked a room to her liking somewhere else you would be sorely wrong.

She booked with expedia even though we clearly did not have what she wanted. By the time she booked we had sold every room except for one room which was still dirty. When made aware of this the woman called expedia who then called me and chewed me out for not helping her guest.

When I tried to make the expedia loser clerk aware of this the woman threatened that she could have us banned from the service and we would lose a lot of business. She was not very nice about it.

I had to go down to the dirty room and quickly clean it for this clueless woman.

Yep, expedia can go to hell.

[Mr Hero]

To the Expedia Agent: Our rooms are no more! They have ceased to be!

Edit: Perhaps one of the reasons the agent is seeing rooms available is because it's after midnight? I've had agents call me past midnight to make sure it's ok to book.

[Skittles88]

To the Expedia Agent: Our rooms are no more! They have ceased to be!

Edit: Perhaps one of the reasons the agent is seeing rooms available is because it's after midnight? I've had agents call me past midnight to make sure it's ok to book.

No I get off at 11pm; this was at about 6 or so. I think he had seen the room, called me while he was booking it, and didn't refresh the page after my coworker had sold it.
I'm guessing he did what every bad CRS agent does: promise a room to a guest before they actually finish the booking. Then they don't want to tell the customer that something went awry.

[MrSmiley]

The third party booking sites give us more work and headaches; but so far the agents have listened to us when they/we have had to call. *fingers crossed*

Just in the last couple of weeks however, I've had booking.com (owned by priceline) go and make a reservation for a couple of guests. The problem was they did so on a night we were sold out, and had been for weeks. Now booking.com doesn't actually go and put it into the computer system like most 3rd party reservation sites (including priceline) do, instead they basically send us a fax with the guest details and then pocket a referral fee for themselves. So yeah. I'm sure someone just went click click and put it into the system; but as mentioned it was a night where there were no rooms available; and the rest of the city was next to impossible too. Apologies and sighing on my part but at least the guest was understanding; no sucky customer story here.

On the flipside, in the last few days we've discovered that there was an expedia reservation from april that was cancelled, and ok'd by both our end and theirs (I have no idea the details). But nobody on our end ever actually refunded the payment from them. Oops.

Other hotels have set other pricing structures and fee setups. But we decided long ago that while we would accept 3rd party booking reservations, they would be stuck quoting the same price that we are quoting and have listed on our website. They also are limited to booking our basic style of room; no frills. It cuts down on the amount of customers trying to weed around rules/pricing that we tell them.

[Moirae]

Heh, yeah, sometimes I wonder about the Expedia people.

They forced us to take the Hotel Pay format along with the Expedia Pay format when we signed with them. We HATE this with a blind passion.

Whereas Booking.com has a Hotel Pay format at all times, at least they are explicit to the guest that the guest needs to abide by our prepay and cancellation policies. Expedia doesn't currently have that set up and they told us "We aren't sure how to code for it". Basically, that means that if a guest chooses Hotel Pay, they don't need to pay any deposit or abide by the cancellation policy we have set up per the agreement between the hotel and Expedia. The problem is that Expedia is a HUGE player in my city and not being on them is a problem for a hotel, so basically Expedia gets what they want, even with their 25% (or more) margin (for non-hotel people... think of Expedia like a Travel Agent. The Margin is their commission but it's paid up front rather than after the stay like a Travel Agent).

We've been trying to talk Expedia into changing this policy. We need to start taking a deposit and the guest needs to abide by our cancellation. As it is, Expedia doesn't receive ANY special event dates (they've all been blacked out by us) because of the insane Hotel Pay policies it has. Other websites are welcome to book with us for special events.

As my husband says "Expedia is the hotel mafia".

Incidentally, our system doesn't have the ability to be booked automatically. Some larger hotels can do that, but we do not. We load a certain number of rooms for availability on the sites (usually 1, maybe 2 on each different booking engine) to keep a strangle hold on our inventory since we have so few rooms. And once we are down to three rooms, all websites get shut down except ours.

[Mriswith]

I remember an incident with Expedia, years ago (when my hotel first started using it), where there was a small but significant flaw in their system. Assume that you booked a room with 2 beds for 2 people at a rate of $60. Expedia would pay us $45 for the room. No problem. Assume you booked 2 rooms with 2 beds for 2 people each at $60 each. Still $45 each for us, right? Nope, Expedia's computer made it $45 for the pair, and autoloaded that much to the card provided to us for the stay. When I called them (because the card wouldn't run for the second room) the agent I spoke with said that we would have to eat the loss. I laughed. I told her the options she had was to pay us the rate we offered or find a new hotel for her guests. I have hated Expedia ever since.

[Skittles88]

Booking.com... I have actually had no poblems with them. If a guest wants to cancel late, and we decide just to let them go (its a LOT easier than fighting it since we are a small motel) we just phone up b.com and let them know, they verify with the guest, and all is well.
We control the inventory we have avail. here at the hotel, since they aren't hooked up to the central system, so we can just turn off all availiablity for our high season.
The ONLY time this presents a problem is if someone forgets to turn off the inventory and another guest books a room. I've had this happen once. She booked a King that we didn't have, but was happy to take a 2 queen bedroom instead.

Expedia on the other hand... Hell in a handbasket. Especially when they tell guests its perfectly fine for them to bring a pet, and don't bother to let US know. Then we look like the jackasses when we have to tell the guest that they are booked into a non-pet room.

[NecessaryCatharsis]

I've only booked with a third party site once, and it was a complete cock-up. The type of room I booked wasn't available at the hotel I booked. Not as in it was already occupied, but as in it didn't exist!

The hotel clerk was great though, I had booked a suite, so I could have a separate room to put my son to bed in, and could stay up and watch tv, read or whatever, and not be forced to sit in the dark or read in the bathroom for hours until I slept. When the hotel clerk heard why I wanted it, she gave me two room with an adjoining door, no extra charge for the second room.

And no, I would never book with an independent website again.

[smileyeagle1021]

3rd party sites are parasites... the commission they charge is usurious (I've seen upwards of 25%), they routinely have incorrect information about hotels, and misquote policies all the time... and for this they add... well, actually nothing that isn't already provided by the hotel's own website.
I've lost track how often I see expedia agents book reservations for the wrong day, in the wrong room, hell in the wrong state (I can understand people who google us and don't realize that there is a similarly named resort in Mississippi that is ahead of us on the google results and books without paying too close of attention, because neither website prominently displays the address, and end up booking the wrong place, but seriously, how the hell does the agent who is supposed to be a professional about this miss details like that).

[Moirae]

3rd party sites are parasites... the commission they charge is usurious (I've seen upwards of 25%), they routinely have incorrect information about hotels, and misquote policies all the time... and for this they add... well, actually nothing that isn't already provided by the hotel's own website.
I've lost track how often I see expedia agents book reservations for the wrong day, in the wrong room, hell in the wrong state (I can understand people who google us and don't realize that there is a similarly named resort in Mississippi that is ahead of us on the google results and books without paying too close of attention, because neither website prominently displays the address, and end up booking the wrong place, but seriously, how the hell does the agent who is supposed to be a professional about this miss details like that).

Oh big time. And not just expedia, though expedia is the hardest one to get the information changed. When we first signed up, in spite of the fact that we had told them otherwise when we signed with them, some of them were telling people that we had a swimming pool and hot tub (we don't have either), that our rooms have jacuzzi's (no they don't), that we have free parking (yeah, on the street and you can't park in front of the hotel) and more. Expedia can take months to get that fixed. And sometimes we still come across things that have been added to our listing that weren't there a month ago.

Plus, expedia never tells us when the guests have pets. Which is a problem because we don't accept pets in all our rooms. There are times when we don't know the guest has a pet and they are put in to a room that should be without pets (we don't want pets in our honeymoon suite, for example).

There's a reason we will match any online rate that you can find. Because we don't want to pay the commission to these thieving websites.

[violiavampyr]

I wonder if part of the problem would be on the user end. Say a user sees "pet friendly", and doesnt find out about any type of deposits or pay attention when they are listed. I can't even imagine calling up Expedia and booking that way, there just seems to much room for error (people have Poor comunication skills).
Everything's on the website, there's a crap ton of disclaimers and memos. Heck, people can even compare what's listed on Expedia to the hotels actual site.

As for wanting a bill, I really don't get that. The customer would have already gotten an invoice from Expedia breaking down the costs.
Like when I went to Galveston, I payed months in advance (I always do that, so if someone tries to get me to work those days I can go,"it's already paid for, suck it."),probably paid a little bit of a higher rate (there was also an extra charge for having 6 people, oh well), but I got exactly what I wanted.
I got billing confirmation in my email, and it was on Expedia's website. Closer to the date I even called up the hotel to verify that things looked good on their end. All ok. Yeah, at the time I was pretty anxious, but I'd never gotten a hotel room for myself before.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I used to use Expedia/Travelocity/Priceline to book regularly, but I started realizing that I could save more money and have less hassle if I just dealt with the hotels directly.

My wife went and I went on a road trip out west earlier this year and I booked every hotel room direct, at good rates and had no issues with anything whatsoever.

No more 3rd parties for me.

[Skittles88]

I used to use Expedia/Travelocity/Priceline to book regularly, but I started realizing that I could save more money and have less hassle if I just dealt with the hotels directly.

My wife went and I went on a road trip out west earlier this year and I booked every hotel room direct, at good rates and had no issues with anything whatsoever.

No more 3rd parties for me.

Good! Haha. Its always best to book direct. And some chains (like mine but I don't want to give away where I work) have special online rates when you book through the direct website. In fact our website boasts the cheapest rate you can book anywhere.
It also allows for far more lenient cancellations, and I can tell ya a clerk is far more willing to give free upgrades to people who book direct over 3rd party. You also won't get the crappiest room in the house. (I stick 3rd parties in the former smoking rooms and back near the train tracks. I'm not putting a guest who paid us far more in a crappy room.)

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I used to use Expedia/Travelocity/Priceline to book regularly, but I started realizing that I could save more money and have less hassle if I just dealt with the hotels directly.

My wife went and I went on a road trip out west earlier this year and I booked every hotel room direct, at good rates and had no issues with anything whatsoever.

No more 3rd parties for me.

And then there's my mom who only uses those third party websites to book hotel rooms.

If you're not on Travelocity, Expedia, Priceline, Orbitz, etc, you don't exist to her.

She also still writes checks at the grocery store.