Aldo learned something interesting this week: airlines will sell two tickets issued to the same person on the same flight from different vendors. It’s one thing to buy two adjacent seats at the same time if you’re a person with an above-average rear end, but Aldo and his wife each bought him a ticket for his flight. He went directly through United, and she used Expedia. This turned out to be a terrible mistake, since it meant that United and Expedia could play the always-exciting game of “blame the company, then pawn the customer off on them.”

Yesterday I realized my wife bought me a flight ticket through Expedia on Sep. 17 using her credit card ($590, itinerary #[redacted]). Problem is I already bought it on August 22 using my card ($490). Weird I thought: same passenger, same flight, same dates, how the system let it go through? However, I gathered all my patience and started to call…

Called United and they said they could not refund the latest one because it had been issued by Expedia.

Called Expedia, stayed 20 minutes on hold because they had to consult “United supervisor”. The answer was neither ticket could be refunded because issued in different months (??) and blamed United.
Called United again and asked to refund any of those. They confirmed the second one had to be canceled through Expedia and I accepted to refund the first one.

What should I think? Expedia did not wanted to refund because they were going to lose whatever commission they have so they lied and it cost me $100. In the future I’ll make sure nobody in my family uses Expedia again.

I’ve learned that I should never accuse a company or a person of outright and intentional lies when the problem could be explained more simply by incompetence or poor training. That’s what this case sounds like.

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