Monday, October 13, 2008

Expedia Evaluation

I visited Expedia.com planning to book (or at least, pretend to book)
a flight from Cleveland to Boston. I didn't have exact dates in minds,
but wanted to book sometime around New Year's. After I entered the
cities and dates I was interested in, I toggled "Flexible Dates", only
to have my information disappear--I had to re-enter it on a new form.
On the next page, I was shown a calendar of available dates for my
flight, around the end of December. While a few of the dates had a
price for flights on that date, most required me to click through to
view the flights and prices. This removed much of the ease that I was
hoping to gain by searching for flexible dates.

Once I picked a date, I had few problems selecting flights. The site
was always clear about my place in the process of selecting flights
and seats, and provided lots of information about each flight. After
that step, I ran in to more problems. On the numerous confirmation
pages, I constantly felt lost among the promotions and up-sells
cluttering the page. Plus, I couldn't go back to edit my itinerary, if
I wanted to make changes.

-- Kevin Gessner

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