So Expedia got sued for charging customers tax/service fees that may not actually have been incurred. Apparently they were pretty guilty of the allegations as there’s been a big settlement of the class action.
You might not know it, though, as the only notification I saw, I stumbled across in a junk mail folder. Could they have been so devious as to spamify their message in hopes that they could minimally comply with the court’s requirements but minimize the number of people who actually found out they had money coming to them? Who knows.
To be fair, they did auto-refund money to every class member’s Expedia account in the form of an electronic coupon for future travel. And, it’s not a trivial amount if you’ve used Expedia to any non-trivial extent over about the past eight years (I got several hundred dollars, but I’m on the high end of travellers). At the least it’s ten or twenty or a hundred dollars you didn’t know you had coming if you’ve got any purchase history to speak of with them.
Here’s how to do it: log into your Expedia account. Go to My Account. Scroll down to My Coupons (near the bottom), and you should see one. They expire next year, I think, so use it or lose it (I guess you’d use it by clicking Apply Coupon when you’re ready to pay for your next trip).
Enjoy and let me know if you get an enjoyable little windfall.
Good point – the taxes/local tourism recoupment fees they were phantom-charging (in some cases) applied only to hotels (and I thought car rental agencies but maybe I am wrong).
