I recently bought a air ticket on Expedia.com for my wife to travel to Zimbabwe for the holidays. I’ve been buying tickets online, much like the rest of the Western world, for some time now. I marvel at the simplicity of this service and the complexity of the technology which meld into one pleasant and down-right exciting experience. (My wife and I love traveling.) Prices are competitive, itineraries are plentiful, and the buying process is a snap.
So, I bought two tickets for my wife: one for the long haul to Africa, a second on SAA for the short haul flight once on the continent. Since the second ticket is on the South African airline, Expedia could understandably not issue e-tickets. But why did I have to pay such a huge shipping fee to have the tickets delivered via UPS? I could’ve ordered an iron horse from Amazon and paid less in shipping. The worst part about it was that Expedia gave me no choice, in contrast to the way the rest of their site functions. The choices were:
1) pay huge fee for shipping a paper ticket for delivery in 5-10 days, or
2) pay an even huger fee for shipping a paper ticket for delivery in 3 days.
I’m not looking for freebies, but after dropping a few thousand bucks on an across-the-world itinerary, you’d think Expedia would throw in the shipping. I know they’re not turning a profit on the shipping fees, especially since the tickets didn’t come from Johannesburg. Maybe they could take a page from LL Bean’s book: the Freeport-based company has been offering free shipping for months.
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