Poor Victoria, all she wanted was a queen sized bed. Expedia told her she had one, but when she arrived at the Mosser Hotel, what she found was a double bed and a moldy room. After both Expedia and the Mosser refused to issue either a credit or an apology, Victoria called American Express, which quickly issued a full refund. Now, Expedia has decided to get their money back by sicking debt collectors on Victoria.

Victoria writes:

In September, I booked a room at The Mosser Hotel for a couple of nights. My Expedia reservations explicitly states that I get a room with a queen bed. Unfortunately, as we can all guess, that didn’t happen. Upon checking in, we were told that we booked a room with a double bed. I argued and argued and showed them that my reservation states “queen bed.” They kept telling me that I’d have to pay more for a queen bed and didn’t accept the mistake. So I ended up accepting the room with a double bed. While in the room’s bathroom, I noticed something that looks like black mold on the ceiling. I mentioned it to one of the guys at the front desk and he acted completely non-challant about it, didn’t even offer to come up to look at it.

After my stay, I contacted Expedia to see if there is anything I can do about getting reimbursed for my awful experience. Their reply was pretty much a “NO.” I emailed American Express (my card of choice and the card I used to pay for the hotel) about my stay. Basically, they said that they will email Expedia and Expedia has a certain amount of days to dispute the claim. Expedia didn’t and American Express gave me a full credit.*

Fast forward 6 months and I receive a letter from a collections agency that was hired by Expedia to collect the debt for the full amount of the stay. Shouldn’t Expedia deal with American Express? Is there anything I can do other than write more letters to the collections agency?

*I never requested a full credit from AmEx, I simply asked if there is any sort of a credit I can get. AmEx immediately issued me a full credit.

The first step when dealing with debt collectors is always to dispute the debt. Even if it’s legitimate, make them eat the time and expense of sending you the paperwork for your files. If they respond, send them a copy of AmEx’s decision. And if that doesn’t get them to back off, offer to charge the debt to your AmEx card.

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