My close friend is from Mexico. He was recently diagnosed with a very serious medical problem and it was decided that he should return to his homeland to see his family and seek further medical care. The whole situation was a complete surprise and we had to make some quick decisions. Buying tickets was just one of them.
Logged into various web sites and looked for deals on tickets from North Carolina (USA) to Mexico City. We got a deal for about $400 each ticket. Some vendors had tickets for as high as $750, and we were looking at traveling in less than one week of the purchase. I expected to pay a premium an was quite relieved that we didn't have to. Everything with the purchase itself was just fine. There were no hangups at the airport and everything was in order.
The problem we did have came on the morning of the flight. Four hours before the plane was to takeoff, we cheked our bank account for available funds. We had a negative balance, and honestly - that never happens. At first we thought we had been cleaned out by an unscruplous waiter from a restaurant, or something similar. We got online and started making phone calls to see what was going on. We didn't even have money to fill our gas tank to get to the airport.
What we find is that Expedia had put an $800 authorization hold on our account when we first made the purchase online. That's fine, I understand how that works. The authorization was supposed to be lifted after "three or four days" to give the airline ample time to do their charges while the cash is still in the bank. The airline did indeed make their transaction from my account the very next day from the date of our purchase. So in the end, I was charged about $800 from the airline, and was still under the $800 authorization hold from Expedia. In effect, my account was down $1600 for an $800 purchase. We could not withdraw cash nor use our debit card at the gas pump. This information was given to us by our bank's representatives.
First, Expedia denied having the hold. "We've already released that hold. It may take a couple of days for it to post to your account." So they expected us to be under the gun for those couple of days, which happend to include the day of our travel. I figured with some diplomacy and reasoning, I could get this removed. I called back to my bank, explained the situation, and asked what could be done. Understandably, they cannot remove a vendor's hold on my account because I ask them to. However, they were willing to work with me. My bank said that if a representative from the vendor (Expedia) were to call and ask for the hold to be removed, then he (the bank rep) would remove the hold immediately and make the money in our bank available to us. Sounds reasonable.
The following three calls to Expedia yielded nothing. For the first call, we were directed to "the wrong department" and was asked to call back and ask for another department. For the second call, we were hung up on by the Expedia representative. I don't know if you can tell from my tone, but I assure you that I was always calm, never disrespectful, or otherwise malevolent. Finally, for the final call, we had a representative that seemed to understand our problem and was trying earnestly to see how she could handle the situation with her supervisors, etc. I don't know, she at least sounded sympathetic and put on us hold a number of times. The end party-line was this - "We don't make those kind of phone calls."
Expedia put the hold on our account to insure that the airline could do their transaction. After the transaction occured, their was no use of the hold on our account. Expedia was willing to let the hold fall off the account through their automated wait system. My bank was willing to talk to someone from Expedia and verify that the airline had indeed drafted the money from our account and was satisfied. Expedia had already internally set the hold to be removed. All I f#$%&* needed was for Expedia to call my bank, the bank would tell Expedia that the airline had their money, and then Expedia could say "Great, then please remove the authorization hold we have on the customer's account. There is no further use for it."
All I needed was a simple, toll-free phone call from one vendor representative to a bank representative.
