What is the percentage of EXPEDIA’s income that comes through scam?
Friday, April 25th, 2008 EMOB: the most successful and dangerous travel scam
EMOB = EXPEDIA Model Of Business (Electronic MOB)
If you buy a ticket for 1,249.95 U$D EXPEDIA will charge you a 5 U$D fee and it will appear a total 1,254.95 U$D transaction in your credit card.
What if EXPEDIA fail to provide the service? What if EXPEDIA never arrange your trip?
Who keeps that money? Do you think that the airline see that money? Do you think EXPEDIA cheats people to make the airlines richer?
If the airline never sees that money then EXPEDIA can make a fortune by simply selling something (tickets, rooms). Then, they just need to find an excuse (or even lie or cheat you) to not provide the service and keep your money. Read about the dirty tricks EXPEDIA can use to do that. IN FACT, EXPEDIA used many of them when they tried to scam me. (Read my case ).
In my case the conclusion is pretty simple:
EXPEDIA failed to arrange my trip, then EXPEDIA lied to me = EXPEDIA tried to scam me. Thus, EXPEDIA is a scammer and EMOB (EXPEDIA model of business) had become the most successful scam for these reasons:
- People believe EXPEDIA is a honest company (until they are scammed)
- By running alongside a legitimate business, EXPEDIA can scam other customers and make millions by cheating and scamming people.
- The media is reluctant to publish complaints about EXPEDIA probably because they are afraid to lose the money they make by advertising them (EXPEDIA spend ~ 170 M U$D in advertising).
- EXPEDIA has “friends” that help them to delete negative aspects about them in the internet (read about the “Wikipedia affair”: http://www.victimsofexpedia.com/wiki.htm )
No matter what EXPEDIA says, it was an attempt to scam me. The funny thing is that EXPEDIA failed miserably. They went the extra mile to try to scam me 1,254.95 U$D but thanks to my credit card I could recover all that money. Technically speaking, I was scammed for 6-7 months because EXPEDIA kept my money (with no other intention but to scam me) for that time until my credit card forced them to reimburse it. Other customers might not be lucky as I was.
Just do a simple math: 1,254.96 U$D per customer scammed is a very profitable business. They can make million scamming thousand of people like they tried with me. Even if the money EXPEDIA makes by scamming people is a small percentage compared to their legitimate business is very significant.
I’m not alone. Most of these people feel they were cheated by EXPEDIA in one way or another:
http://www.expedianews.com
Be careful, you (or your friends and/or relatives) might be the next victim and/or lose thousand of dollars due to their unethical business practice.
