A classic "small business is mad" blog post. It even contains the a quote about how much money they spent on their business, "We put all of our money, time and heart into making it work," as though that's a criterion Expedia uses when deciding how to respond to customer service inquiries.
I'm also surprised that the links broke and Expedia's "IT department" said they'll "never" be fixed. That doesn't really make any sense. I can't help but think that the images are hosted by the hotel itself and that they broke the images. I don't know. The story sounds plausible but unlikely to me and has all the classic "crazy person" literary features. (Some sources to back this up would be good: emails, screenshots, etc.)
First, Expedia, as a service business, should definitely pay attention to passionate customers. Word of mouth matters.
Second, this lacks "all the classic 'crazy person' literary features." The copy is reasonably well written, the formatting is solid, the narrative is coherent, and it's part of a long-running blog with reasonable articles. It's a bit over-written and over-dramatic, but not egregiously so.
Ditto. Some more proofs would be great in order to establish some trust with this post. If everything written here is right then I would say they have a pretty good case in suing them.
I would also argue some lawyers would even take this case (granted the proofs are solid) based on a success fee.
EDIT: I strongly recommend to read the comments, someone wrote that he witnessed this personally (of course comments could be fake but it's still something).
David Beau. said - December 4, 2012 at 11:29 pm
We can verify parts of this. We have stayed at the Luna Blue almost every year since Tony and Cheri have opened.
In late 2011 I was checking on availability of the Luna Blue for our vacation. I was surprized to find expedia said they had no room available.
I then checked a couple other small hotels in Playa and was told they were also full. I then contacted Cheri and found that they did have plenty of rooms. Which we did book thru the hotel.
Deanna said - December 5, 2012 at 11:03 am
I know first hand about this. I had booked a room back in Feb. to travel in November. I got an email mid Oct. from Hotels.com that Luna Blue no longer had any openings for that time. It didn’t make sense to me.
After calling Hotels.com and them wanting me to book elsewhere I got hold of Cheri. She was in San Francisco at the time but took the time out to make sure I was able to rebook through their website directly for the time I had originally booked.
I was also able to save 10% off what I had originally expected to pay. We went and stayed at Luna Blue and it was truly a wonderful experience. Cheri was out of town when we came so I was not able to meet her but Tony made us feel welcome and we wish you guys all the luck fighting this horrible thing that has happened.
I would certainly stay here again if I return to Playa.
While frequently with these articles you have to wonder about the validity of all parts of the story, I can say I've had A similar experience from a consumer perspective. I was trying to book hotels for my wedding and couldn't find a hotel that I knew was in the town my in-laws lived in.
I looked up the hotel on the corporate website and it showed it as completely booked, and this particular had didn't show up in any searches for rooms because of that.
I ended up calling them and found out they had left the chain and were becoming independent and had plenty of rooms. So I can't confirm this small business' story, I Can confirm that similar things happen.
I'm not familiar with how hotels inform 3rd party websites about room reservations. Could it just be that smaller independent hotels simply don't have the technical chops to correctly set up or manage such notifications?
I guess you never read the full story, you can clearly see a link to evidence of Expedia doing the same thing in France and getting sued for it: http://www.tnooz.com/2010/04/19/news/tripadvisor-and-expedia.... Just think about it, if a huge company with hundreds of lawyers still got sued for these tricks - I bet they have done lot's of similar things and got away with it.
Also a part regarding images not hosted on Expedia. Do you really think such a big company as Expedia will allow to host images on hotel's own servers? It's impossible to handle Expedias traffic with a small shared hosting which most of the small hotels are using...
I'm also surprised that the links broke and Expedia's "IT department" said they'll "never" be fixed. That doesn't really make any sense. I can't help but think that the images are hosted by the hotel itself and that they broke the images. I don't know. The story sounds plausible but unlikely to me and has all the classic "crazy person" literary features. (Some sources to back this up would be good: emails, screenshots, etc.)