Expedia thinks it’s okay to place a total of $964 on hold on Nicholas’ and his girlfriend’s credit cards, even though they’ve already paid for their $3,000 trip in full. When he contacted Expedia to ask them what gives, they told him it would be released within 72 hours. Maybe this is Expedia’s way of combatting travel inflation by creating a make-believe rebate-y feeling when you buy an expensive vacation package.

My name is Nicholas. Two days ago my girlfriend and I tried booking a vacation package to Paris through expedia.com.
 
The total cost of the package was approximately $3,000.
 
Expedia gives you the option to split the payment between two cards, so we decided to do that. I entered the card information for my Debit card, she entered the information for her credit card. Both Visa.
 
I wanted to put 80% of the cost on my debit card, the remaining 20% was to be charged to my girlfriends credit card.
 
After we entered all of our payment information, we clicked on the checkout/payment button. The website loaded for a little bit and threw us an error.
 
The error indicated that the payment could not be processed at this time and that we should try again later. 
 
We tried entering our information again, we got the same error.
 
(The error most likely occurred because since I was charging over $2,000 on my debit card, my bank declined the payment since the limit for an online purchase is usually $1,500. You need to call the bank prior to the purchase in order to buy something over $1,500.)
 
Anyways, the next day I check my bank statement online and see that Expedia.com put $464 of my money on hold. My Girlfriend checks her online credit car statement and $500 of her money was put on hold as well.
 
I thought this to be absolutely ridiculous.
 
1. Expedia.com told us that the payment was not processed and to try again later.
2. Neither my girlfriend nor I received emails informing us of these transactions or any other sort of confirmation.
3. When we checked our itinerary on expedia.com, no where did it say that our money was being put on hold.
 
I called expedia costumer service to see what the hell was going on.
 
I was told by a customer service representative that the money was being put on hold and would return to our accounts within 72 hours.
 
I have absolutely no idea what the point of holding about $1000 of our money is since the package itself cost almost $3000.
 
The customer service rep didn’t really have a clear explanation as to why our money was on hold, but she did assure us that within 72 hours the money would be back in our accounts.
 
We really wanted to book the trip so we decided to simply charge the entire thing on her credit card.
 
Our trip is now booked, but the $1000 is still on hold.
 
Anyone else have a similar experience?

(Photo: Getty Images)

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