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A small BC boutique hotel has discovered that travel site Expedia had been misleading potential customers.
For the past two years, owners Lori and Randy Strandlund say potential customers clicking on that link were told "rooms are unavailable for your trip dates on Expedia," no matter what date was entered.
[...] The Strandlunds believe they're the latest victims of an online issue that landed Expedia in trouble in France and is the subject of a potential class action lawsuit in the U.S. — the travel site allegedly posting hotels that aren't its clients, listing them as "unavailable," then re-directing customers to member properties that pay Expedia a booking fee.
Expedia has denied wrongdoing in each case.
[...] CBC News tried to bypass the erroneous online search results by calling the phone number listed until recently alongside the Moon Water Lodge address on the Expedia site.
Rather than connect with the inn, it rang through to an Expedia call centre — in Cairo, Egypt.
The booking agent stated that since Moon Water Lodge was "updating their inventory," he "couldn't access their system right now" and offered to find "other similar hotels in the area."
Lori Strandlund says she hopes to launch a Canadian class action lawsuit against Expedia — if other small hotels in this country report similar problems.
Postscript: When I searched for "Moon Water Lodge" on Google today, the paid Expedia listing for the lodge is the very first listing. As of 2018-05-17 12:49:06 UTC, the first listing is now for https://moonwaterlodge.com/.
[Updated to provide link to source article, reformat story, and to provide updated link results. --martyb]
(Score: 1) by EEMac on Thursday May 17 2018, @11:19PM
When Expedia shows Moon Water lodge in their listing, and say "no rooms available", they:
1. Give all appearances of representing MWL
2. Use that appearance to state something untrue
IANAL, but that sure looks like fraud to me.