In years of booking holidays and flights online we have never had any problems. However, my daughter recently booked a flight with Expedia from Dalaman in Turkey to Gatwick, but when she got to check-in with her friend they were told they had hand luggage only.
She says she had no option when booking to include a case and, it being a British Airways flight, had assumed the case was included. She and her friend were then charged $60 (£40) each, which they had to pay.
I have just been on the website and gone through the whole booking process up to actual payment and at no point does Expedia say the ticket is hand luggage only, nor is there any option to include a case.
The only extra it is possible to add, when booking, is insurance. The confirmation email says nothing at all about it being hand luggage only.
Surely this is mis-selling, as at no point did Expedia make it known there would be extra costs. I would be very interested to hear what Consumer Champions think. RR, London
Last week I used Expedia to book a hotel in Berlin for our family to stay over Christmas. I specifically chose it because it had spa facilities (sauna and swimming pool), but when I rang the hotel today for some additional information I was told we will have to pay an extra €15 (£11) per person per day to use those facilities.
I checked the Expedia website and it does not mention this anywhere. Other additional charges such as car parking and breakfast are explicitly stated.
For four people, over four nights, the extra cost for using the sauna is a substantial amount.
I called Expedia, and while the person acknowledged it is unclear, she was not prepared to let me cancel without paying a fee equivalent to one night’s accommodation – £250. I cannot cancel directly with the hotel because it says my contract is with Expedia. ES, Sheffield
The great problem with using websites such as Expedia is that you are reliant on the accuracy of its listings – which, as these two cases show, are not always what they should be. We were surprised by the first letter, as on most Expedia flight bookings the baggage policy is set out. However, Expedia admits that this didn’t happen in this case
“We have investigated and we can see that there was an error in our system which was causing the baggage information for this airline, on this particular route, to display incorrectly on the site, and we are therefore providing a refund for the baggage costs and a gesture of goodwill,” it told us.
It was a similar case for the hotel booking. Again, Expedia says the extra charges were not listed. The problem consumers have is making the likes of Expedia deal with them properly. It shouldn’t have taken our intervention to get the company to either cancel the booking free of charge or to pay the difference, but too often consumers in your shoes get fobbed off.
The company has now agreed to refund you the sauna expenses. It has also changed both listings as a result of these letters, it says.
We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@theguardian.com or write to Consumer Champions, Money, The Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone number
