Why is it that one can make a reservation on Expedia, finalize the transaction, and then months later (still before the flight) the reservation can show as "not confirmed".

Then after panic sets in and new arrangements have been made, the original reservation gets confirmed and the buyer ends up with two flights? I know this is confusing but it actually happened and I can explain it in more detail if anyone at Expedia actually cares. Let me know. My phone attempts at rectification were dismal at best.

My e-mail to my blind sister explaining that Expedia and American Airlines can't help. It's a bit long.

I am sure you think that nothing has been done on your problem with Expedia and you will have to pay the $86.00. Well, that is not necessarily the case. I talked at great length, albeit unsuccessfully, with Expedia. They claim they can do nothing, which at this point I am very inclined to believe. They said my, your, our only recourse was with the big and magnificent American Airlines, who really wasn't at all involved in the booking process, only the flying process, which for their part went quite well. Anyway, I called American and a recording told me that my conversation may be recorded for quality assurance. I said to myself, "cool, I hope they do record this." From that recording I got sent to a recorded queue and listened to several other recordings about how important my call was to them, so important I had to wait for several minutes listening to recordings. It was during that wait that I realized they did a lot of recording and not much talking. But alas I did get a person on the phone, a nice lady who listened very attentively, she knew she was being recorded. This nice lady told me that she had no mechanism to stop all the recordings, oops, I mean, she had no mechanism to credit the charge and no ability to grant a travel voucher, which is what I really was hoping for. She also told me the only place I could get anyone to listen to me was through their on-line customer service service. I told her that I called the customer service number several times and got a recording that gave me a recorded menu of other recordings I could listen to and when I chose the recording that most sounded like my problem, you guessed it, I got another recording to end all recordings, literally. It told me that basically all I could listen to today was recordings and that all the customer service representative, not tives, tive, was busy and to try my call later, and I got hung up on by a recording. Now that's customer service. When I told the nice lady about my phone attempts at customer service she said,"oh, you shouldn't have called, you should have sent them an e-mail using their handy dandy customer service inquiry submission section." She really said that, except for the handy dandy part. Her explanation as to why that was better than a phone call actually made some sense. It had something to do with them being able to give the matter the proper attention it deserved. They could look up details of the booking and the flights, they could ponder the magnitude of any misdeeds on their part and if there were no misdeeds on their part what the ramification of telling me to "go take a hike" might be. And after giving the actual problem their consideration they could contemplate over how well I explained my problem, how sympathetic they were to my, your, our situation, how pitiful I sounded as I played the blind card several times in my message, how someone who trusted a mediary like Expedia, which AA must endorse or they wouldn't allow them to book for them, got screwed over by a system so involved that no one, I mean no one, actually understands it all, and whether they were feeling in a generous mood that day and could maybe throw us a bone. Or, whether they were stuck in traffic on the way to work that day, and their boss just scolded them over a bunch of mishandled complaints (he had a stack of texts from recorded conversations she made that week), and she got a run in her stocking on the coffee machine table, and her ARM loan just balooned to the sky, and "hell, it was just that time of the month too, and little whiners like me just don't get candy today cause momma's on the rag and you can take your lousy concerns to a higher authority and God help us all if He traces your complaint back to me." See, the options of how they can handle this situation are many and its all in one person's hands. Did we catch them on a good day or did we catch them on a bad day? Were they happy with the world, or pissed at the sun for coming up? Well, you may not believe this, but I was going to say this whole process may take a few days, which is what they told me. But in the time I was writing this brief note to you I received a reply from the big magnificent American Airlines. I will pause now to read their response. I shall return. Well, well, well. There was a "third possibility" (as Arlo Guthrie says in Alice's Restaurant) that I hadn't even considered. They could sound really nice and offer us the travel voucher and then snatch it right back with bureaucratic mumbo jumbo, the communists. The following is cut and pasted from their response.

Dear Mr. Golden:

We've received your refund request. I am sorry as there have been some communication
problems with the online travel agency that issued your sister's ticket. Our records
show that the ticket was ordered at 7:24 p.m. central time on May 3 and issued within
minutes of that time.

While we can't issue a refund, we would be glad to exchange her unused ticket for a
transportation voucher that could be used to help buy another ticket to travel with
us. Unfortunately, the change fee associated with this ticket actually exceeds the
purchase price of the discount ticket. There is no value left. I am sorry.

Your business is important to us, Mr. Golden, and we are sorry that we have to
disappoint you. Thank you for writing and for giving us the opportunity to explain
our position.

This is an "outgoing only" email address. If you 'reply' to this message by simply
selecting the reply button, we will not receive your additional comments. Please
assist us in providing you with a timely response to any feedback you have for us by
always sending us your email messages via AA.com at
http://www.aa.com/customerrelations.

Sincerely,

Ronald A. Weiss
Customer Relations
American Airlines

So there you have it. You can take your $86 dollar unused ticket and exchange it for a travel voucher in that amount, however, as soon as you book any flight and try to use it they will hit you with a $100 change fee. Net result is you actually pay more. I guess Mr. Weiss lost his winning lottery ticket, or his fantasy football team lost on Sunday, or he just found out his daughter needs braces and he has no dental coverage. Sorry for the bad news, and sorry for ever getting involved, it would have been OK if I stayed out of it. As usual, no good deed goes unpunished. You just can't do anybody any favors anymore. It just doesn't pay to try to help others. The whole world is against me...

Blah, Blah, blah!
Love you,