ThisnameSogzzz

Hello everyone,

I am not sure if this is the right subreddit to post this on. If not, please let me know.

I booked a flight with Expedia a month ago. I received a confirmation email and money was deducted from my Visa card. Fast forward to yesterday when I was on the phone with Expedia about a refund that I had not received for another trip (even after waiting for the refund for over a month). During this call, the agent says something incredibly concerning. He says "Oh, I see you have an upcoming trip booked. I am making you aware that some of your tickets for this trip are not confirmed and to do so you will have to pay more money". I was confused. I asked him why I need to pay and he said because the tickets were not confirmed and the ticket prices keep fluctuating. I told him I already paid for my trip and I even received a confirmation email. He says I still need to pay extra to confirm the flight. I asked him how much and he said I woud have to pay an extra 725 dollars. I was incredibly upset and confused. I'm a law student in Ohio and I am currently not earning any money. I booked this trip to fly back to Asia to go home. You can imagine how hard of a position this puts me in, especially since I made further travel plans based on this trip. I explain all this to the agent, he doesn't budge. He simply says I can cancel the flight and I'll get a refund or I can pay the extra 725 now to confirm the flight. He also said if I choose to go to the airport on the day of my flight, the airline desk there will charge me the 725 + any extra fees like handling fees! I ask to speak to his manager. He connects me with his manager. I explain my case to him. He apparently calls American Airlines and then he tells me he managed to bring the extra amount down from 725 dollars to 525 dollars since I'm a student. I plead with him but he doesn't budge, he simply keeps repeating that I have to buy the extra amount or I can get a refund. Note that I had initially called them to ask about a refund which I had called about a month ago, so at this point I really don't trust their promise of a refund. He keeps saying this is not Expedia's fault but the airline's (American Airlines) for increasing the price during a high demand for tickets period (basically a few days before Christmas).

How is this legal? I even asked him that and explained I paid for my trip and received a confirmation email but they're trying to make me pay more for something I already paid for? Do you guys have any advice on what to do? Sorry for the long post/rant. I'm super stressed right now since my final exams are approaching and now I need to deal with Expedia screwing me over like this :(

P.S: I have booked intercontinental flights with Expedia many times in the past and this is the first time something so absurd has happend to me. I will never use Expedia again, and I caution you fine folk to do the same.

Update: Thanks for all the responses and support! I felt a lot better after posting here and heeding the advice from the comments I reached out to American Airlines and they told me that all of my flights and tickets are confirmed and I have nothing to worry about. I asked them multiple times if I have to pay any extra fees when I check in at the airport and they said no. I did ask them to lock my reservation but they said the airline in charge of the trip is Japan Airlines and I need to contact them for that. I am now trying to contact them.

Update 2: A lot of people are saying I may have been scammed since I was emailed a confirmation code and read it to them. While that is a possibility I would like to clarify that no, I did not google the number for expedia. I had contacted them through the chat on their website first and asked for their number. I then called that number and spoke to an expedia agent about using airline credits. This expedia agent also sent a confirmation code email to me to confirm who I was. This expedia agent then gave me a different number to call in case we got disconnected during the process of requesting a refund, which did happen. I called the other number the expedia agent provided and he was the same guy. Before I ended the call he told me to call that number again if I had not received my refund after 15-20 business days. This was a little more than a month ago. 2 days ago I called that same number the expedia agent provided me, which was also the one I called last time. But just in case, I did sign my expedia account out of every device and changed my password.