(-) Expedia.ca

I carefully planned a flight for myself, wife, two kids, in detail, and throughout the entire process was told my price was $1032.94. I read all the conditions, completed a number of online forms, which included entering passenger names, selecting meal and seating preferences, kids' dates of birth, booking the car rental, submitting air mile collector data, etc. etc., the system consistently maintaining, even after clicks to submit each form, that the cost to me, including all fees and taxes, was CDN$1032.84.

When at last I arrived at the final page, entered my credit card information, and clicked "Submit," a new screen appeared, again requesting that I submit my credit card info, but also informing me that the price had risen by almost exactly 20%! The "new" price: $1239.24.

The system conveniently waited until I had completed the bulk of my labour, i.e., I had committed a great deal of time to completing the purchase, before it jacked up the price.

Think about it. This is akin to letting your customer walk through your store, collect his purchases in a shopping cart -- up and down the aisles, selecting carefully items based on price and quality -- and only when he has reached the cash desk, placed all his items on the conveyor, had the barcodes scanned, when he has seen the total cost on the display and you have run his credit card through the reader, then, and only then, you tell him, congeneally, without apology, that the price of all the items he's just purchased have inflated, spontaneously, by 20%. And when he complains, you tell him that it's not your fault; he should blame the manufacturers of the items he's purchased.

A scam? It sure looks like a scam. Expedia claims in their formletter response (part of the "exceptional" customer service they proudly boast), "Expedia.ca uses a real-time airline reservation database that contains current ticket prices and availability. The database is updated as fares change and seats are sold." After I received that response, my phone call to customer service saw me rapidly passed to a queue to speak to a supervisor, where I remained for almost 30 minutes, until at last the original agent returned to say that no one was available to speak to me. I was promised a call back by 5:00 p.m. That call never came.

The system had several opportunities to update the displayed fare to reflect what Expedia claims was a price increase by the airline. Well no, not just the one airline, all the airlines, simultaneously, for as I discovered later when I rechecked fares, Delta, US Airways, Continental, United, all these apparent competitors had, by some staggering coincidence, and while I was dutifully reading conditions and punching data into forms, hiked their prices. Does this sound at all suspicious to you?