Last November, I booked and paid for airline tickets
on Expedia.ca for my husband and I to travel to Beijing for the Olympics.  The tickets were issued and sent to us.

One leg

of our flight had us travelling
from New Delhi to Beijing on Air China.  In December, Expedia sent us an auto e-mail to advise that our flight was confirmed, but that the itinerary had been updated.

This is the last time Expedia contacted us. 

In early February, my husband called
the Expedia call centre to enquire about whether it would be possible to cancel
his ticket to Beijing, without cancelling mine.  To his
surprise, the agent advised him that the airline had already cancelled both our
tickets, because the Air China flight had never actually existed.  We were asked
to return our paper tickets to Expedia for a refund.

The next day, I checked my online
itinerary on Expedia.ca and discovered that the Delhi-Beijing leg of our flight
had disappeared.  No acknowledgement or explanation of this change was provided
online. 

I was angered by this turn of events
because we were not offered an alternate flight, only cancellation and refund. 
Further, purchasing replacement tickets to the Olympics had become considerably
more expensive in the almost 3 months since we had originally booked them.  I
had already made arrangements for the trip, such as requesting leave from work,
booking accommodation, and buying events tickets.  Would I have to cancel the whole
trip?

So I called Expedia again for
clarification.  The agent I spoke to was not able to provide me with any answers
or options.  I then wrote to Expedia by e-mail to ask for an explanation in
writing for what had happened, and a statement of Expedia’s policy on redress to
customers when there is a booking error, or an airline cancels a flight or changes an itinerary. 

A
few days later, having received no substantive reply, I decided to
check online to see if, by chance, the same flight could still be
booked on the same date.  To my astonishment, it turned out that, not
only did the flight still exist, I could still book it on Expedia.ca
and on the Air China website - only at considerably greater expense. 
What story was the Expedia agent telling us, then, about the flight
never existing?  So I wrote again to Expedia to advise them what I had
discovered.  And again.  And I called again.  And again.  To date no
substantive response, no explanation, no policy statement, and no
refund. 

I’ve
never encountered problems booking flights with Expedia before.  But
the lack of customer service offered by Expedia when something does go
wrong is appalling.