Expedia's ‘Price Drop Protection' may not be what it seems

Grace Mayemura recently traveled to Japan for the cherry blossom season. The trip was perfect.

“It’s just the sight of it. You can’t get it out of your mind. It’s beautiful,” she said.

But it was also pricey. Two economy plane tickets on the Japanese airline ANA cost $4,600.

When Mayemura bought the tickets on Expedia, she also paid $55 a ticket for Price Drop Protection, a guarantee that Expedia will “refund the difference if the price drops before you fly.”

“If I can get even just a little bit of a difference in price, that would help with the trip,” she said.

And prices did go down. Mayemura later found the tickets on the same ANA flight in same economy cabin for $1,500.

“It’s a huge difference. $800 per person. I’m like, 'Yay! I bought this Price Drop Protection, so I should get a refund,'” she said.

But she didn’t. The new tickets were an exact match except for the fare class, according to Expedia.

So what’s fare class?

It’s a combination of letters and numbers, a code that airlines use behind the scenes to set their prices. 

“I just find that to be pretty deceptive for a consumer,” said Mayemura.

In fact, here’s a peek at just how complex this system can get: The I-Team used a prescription service for frequent fliers and looked up the fare class codes for an economy flight from LAX to Tokyo on ANA. We found dozens of them, and some are 12 digits long and can vary by just one digit. If any one of those digits is off, Expedia’s Price Drop Protection won’t kick in. 

Travel expert Katy Nastro with going.com says Price Drop Protection might not be worth the money.

“Price Drop Protections are good in theory, but they often come with a lot of restrictions and a lot of fine print,” she explained.

Nastro said sites like Expedia aren’t always upfront about the restrictions. In fact, on Expedia, users have to click through to the terms and conditions to see any mention of the fare class restriction.

The I-Team asked Expedia how often its Price Drop Protection works for consumers, but it wouldn’t tell us. It just said the difference in fare class codes in Mayemura’s case was significant – the expensive ticket allowed her to make changes before her flight, and the cheaper one didn’t. 

But none of that mattered to Mayemura. She regrets even buying the Price Drop Protection.

Instead, she could have canceled her expensive tickets and used that credit to buy the cheaper ones, pocketing the leftover credit for a future flight. 

“I would never use it again. And I would actually recommend people not to use it because it doesn’t seem very fair,” she said.

In the end, booking through Expedia and buying its price drop protection cost Mayemura an extra $1,700.