Expedia drops fees for booking over the phone

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a call to Expedia. If you have missed talking to a real human when making your travel reservations because the extra fees forced you to figure out how to do it online, get ready to have  your life back. Expedia today, Nov. 5,  let go of all its fees for booking flights, hotels, rental cars and cruises over the phone. Yesterday, calling in travel reservations cost customers $20 per transaction; today, it’s zippo.

Here are four scenarios that will save you money if you call in your reservation with Expedia.

1. If you book your flight by calling an airline directly. You know those pesky charges that airlines tack on if you call them to book your flight? As examples, Virgin America charges $15 per guest per itinerary. Delta charges $20 per person per ticket and United charges $25 per person, per reservation. As of today, if you call Expedia to book a flight (on any of those airlines and others) there will be no extra fee for doing so.

2. If you book your flight over the phone through a a competing online travel agency (OTA). Orbitz, Travelocity and CheapTickets charge $25 to book a flight over the phone. If you are making that call to book flights for more than one person, the fees can go up and up. For two people, it’s $50 on those three other OTAs and $75 for three people. When you call in flight reservations for four people, the fee stays at $75 on Travelocity but becomes $100 on both Orbitz and CheapTickets. [Update on Nov. 5: An earlier version of this post said Priceline doesn't charge for offline flight bookings and hasn't for years. The correct information is that Priceline does not offer telephone bookings for flights.]

3. If you book a flight with some OTAs and need to change or cancel the itinerary. Travelocity, Orbitz and Priceline generally charge $30 for flight changes and cancellations. However, Orbitz has a 24-hour no fee flight cancellation policy through its My Trips feature. Priceline’s Name Your Own Price does not allow changes. CheapTickets charges $50 for flight changes and cancellations.

4. If you book a cruise for a family of four with an OTA and need to cancel it. Some online travel agencies charge for changes. Orbitz charges $75 for canceling a cruise, according to a spokeswoman and their website. [Corrected at 4:30 p.m. Nov. 5: In an earlier version of this post, I noted that I called Orbitz and was told they charge $100 per cabin for cruise cancellations but that there will be no charge if you rebook for a different date on the same phone call. I was also told that again when I called later. But an Orbitz spokeswoman e-mailed to correct this information]. And of course, there’s the nonrefundable $25 booking fee. CheapTickets charges $75 per cabin for cancellations. It’s worth noting that Travelocity and Priceline do not charge a fee to change or cancel a cruise booking.

I talked to Tim MacDonald (photo at left), senior VP and general manager of Expedia.com, about the changes. He had this to say:

“We are proud of our leadership position of not charging fees for things that customers have come to expect as normal service.”

Dropping fees isn’t all that Expedia has done.

The company has also made changes in the past month to make sure that customers are aware of extra fees that may be charged by the airline when they purchase their tickets, such as checked-bag fees that vary from airline to airline.

For example, I went to the Flights section of Expedia and looked at round-trip fares between Los Angeles (LAX) and New York (JFK) departing Nov. 26 and returning Dec. 2. After I selected the flights for both my departing and returning segments, there was a blue box beneath the flight summary that said, “Additional fees may apply at check in.” When I clicked that link, it told me that Delta was going to charge $15 for the first checked bag (each way), $25 for the second checked bag (each way) and that meals might cost up to $8. There was an additional link to their airline fee chart so that you could have a look at what other airlines are charging for the same services.

“Not only are we making sure we’re not charging fees that people expect to get as part of normal service, we’re also highlighting the fees that you will have to pay from our carriers, like fees for checked baggage, so that you know going in what your full cost will be,” said MacDonald.

— Jen Leo, Los Angeles Times Travel & Deal blogger

Image: Expedia logo; Credit: Courtesy of Expedia.com

Photo: Tim MacDonald. Credit: Courtesy of Expedia.com

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 11:04 am by Jen Leo and is filed under Airline travel, Business Travel, Deals, News, Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.