Complaint Review: Expedia Mark Lambert

I am writing in extreme fury, in the mid-night of a day, after just getting off a 2-hour call with Expedia.  Though I am writing in fury, I acknowledge, and appreciate, the customer support I have been getting from Expedia for all these many years.  However, the whole communication with Mark Lambert just now was an extreme bummer, and I could not hold my temper. 

The whole process starts with my booking of a set of return tickets on Expedia yesterday.  Then I had a conflict within my firm that I sought to cancel the booking. I relied on the well-advertised 24-hr free cancellation rule, and called them within 24 hours. Then a representative kindly told me that my return ticket is readily cancellable, but he would need to check with airline/his supervisor regarding the departure ticket.

He explained that the carrier is a low-cost carrier that they don't have direct authorization to the carrier to cancel the booking. He called the carrier, but the carrier does not work over weekend. All fine, all great. I held the line, and got transferred to another rep who seems to be relatively higher up, whose name is Dominic. He was so helpful.

He checked my info, and told me that the booking should be cancelable, but he does not have the authorization, for the same reason the first rep mentioned. He then told me to contact Expedia corporate, and gave me a phone to call them within 7 hours, because at that time, the corporate office has not opened. This call lasted for one hour.

Then after 7 hours, as directed, I called Expedia corporate via the number given to me, but could not get through AT ALL. Then I called their usual customer support, and a Jason answered my call. He was a nice customer support staff; and because he is new to the case, we went through all the explanation process, which is totally fine and understandable.

Again, he lacked the authority, and offered to put me in touch with his supervisor Rambell [ph]. Rambell deserves full credit, very helpful, very gentle, and actually understood that by the time he jumped into the scene, I had already been on call with Expedia for 2 hours. Again, he told me that he needed to reach a supervisor, here Mark Lambert came into the scene, after around 1 hour and 40 minutes that I've been holding the line for the second call.

Mark answered the phone, and outright stated that we can't cancel the booking for you. you should call the airline directly. the 24-hour cancellation rule? sorry, doesn't apply to your case, and it is written somewhere, I don't know why you didn't see it. [In fact, now, after the call, I went back to my booking page, and it does not say anywhere that the 24-hour rule doesn't apply to my case.]

The disclaimer might be available in some fine prints, but sorry - it was the customer's fault not to read it. Then he said, hey, after booking, we sent you an email, "any issue you should contact the airline directly." we disclaimed that already, "any issue" includes cancellation, and you should not call us.

I was good-tempered until then. I don't understand that after holding the call for so long, all I get is a cold, almost selfish answer from someone in the "Expedia Corporate." This entire conversation with Mark sets the record of how frustrated I am with a customer service staff. I told him if that is the case, your first rep should just outright tell me that "sorry we can't cancel it" instead of causing me stay on the line for two calls for 3 hours.

I then offered a solution that I really think the burden now should be on Expedia to call the airline instead of having me NOW, after three hours of non-sense, to call them. Then Mark said, sorry, can't do that, because when we call airline, customers must be present. Fine, I told him to call them first, and then get me in the line. He is a masterhead in pushing back. sorry, airline dictates that customer calls first.

I told him, right today in the afternoon, you reps called the airline, put me on hold, clearly you had the power to call them first. He muted, and said, we can call them first, but we need to call you after, and if we don't have availability (i.e. if we get too many calls), we might not have capacity to do that. I then told him you are a supervisor, you can assign the case to a rep and tell him it's a priority.

He then pushed back, again, and again, and simultaneously denying he was pushing back, about that availability nonsense. After we had an argument on this minor tiny issue for (I don't remember, 20 mins), he finally agreed with my approach. This shows he clearly can do it. Oh, I forgot to add, in the midst of the argument, I told Mark I am going to complain about the case. He then replied "I will be addressing the complaint" or "I will be one of the persons addressing it." How laughable and arrogant. Why does Expedia have such a guy in its corporate customer service team?