Three months ago I booked a flight worth of $480 from expedia, however I had to cancel it unfortunately. Expedia told me I would expect a $375 worth of penalty. Canceling a flight in US is a completely different story than in China. Being a Chinese I thought that means the remaining part, $105, which they called “credit”, even if not refunded to us directly, could be used for our future booking.
With that stupid cognition, yesterday I booked a new flight, worth of $363, trying to leverage the credits. Such kind of booking cannot be fulfilled through the website, thus I had to call their service number. A customer representative answered my call and helped me with the booking. I guess she warned me somehow by “you need to pay $375 as penalty to use the credits, do you really want to proceed?”, I have to admit I was so stupid at that moment with my preconceived idea that I completely ignored the warning - I thought I was going to be charged $258 anyway for the tickets by leveraging the credits. Thus I confirmed and the customer representative made the booking for me and everything was done.
Today I found that my credit card was charged $375. I was shocked. I picked up the phone and made an questioning. Within half an hour’s phone call, I was educated that I actually made a “change of flight” for my previously cancelled flight. Certainly I need to pay the penalty for changing a flight and if my new flight worth less than my previous flight, that’s my fault.
In China, when I cancel a flight, it usually means I get part (if not full) of my money back with certain penalty. The penalty is applied to my previous payment, rather than my future payment. Expedia (or the airline in US) is cunning: the cancellation is not actually a cancellation, it’s just a reserved opportunity for change of flight in future. The penalty is applied to your future payment, and if you didn’t use your previous payment - aka “credits” - wisely, you’re nuts!
To make it simple: I should buy this flight with full payment, $363, since it worth much less than $480 (even worth less than the penalty); and leverage the credits next time when I book a flight worths more than $480. This is as simple as any “intelligent” human being would do.
However, nobody warned (or suggest) me like that when I was performing the booking yesterday. Nobody. I was stupid, and the customer representative allowed me to be stupid.
As a result, I was converted to an angry customer from a stupid customer. I almost roared to the customer representative. The case finally was escalated up to a supervisor, and to stroke me down, the supervisor offered me a $100 coupon as a compensation finally.
I accepted that simply just because I got tired after an hour’s chat. Did I become a happy customer thereafter? Definitely not. What about expedia? Did they win? No. They actually lost a $100 for this transaction, and what’s the worse, they got an unsatisfied customer, just because their customer representative doesn’t know how to prevent their customer to do stupid thing. Lose-lose situation.
I believe I’m not the only stupid customers. Actually no business should assume their customers are experts to their business, knowing every details. If a customer is trying to perform a stupid action, stop him/her, give him/her better options, rather than an insignificant warning such as “are you sure you want to do this?”.
Customer satisfactory, it is much easier said than done.
