Topic: Expedia, world's largest travel company, now accepts Bitcoin. Your thoughts? - page 2. (Read 3304 times)

The more rollover of bitcoins through business the better I feel, It makes it less of a investment to the common person "pretty sure they think of it 1 of 2 ways, its like gold or wow gold" when people can use BTC in every day life, the more friendly it becomes.

Not all the merchants are converting their coins to fiat immediately. For example, Patrick M. Byrne of Overstock has said that his company is storing 10% of all the BTC revenue as Bitcoins. Even better, Mart Tang of i-Pmart (Malaysia) has said that his company will hold all the BTC payments in Bitcoins only, and will not convert any them to fiat.

Will use it soon, really exited. I've always liked Expedia.

Sweet - looks like it hasn't been fully integrated onto their other domains just yet (eg. Expedia.co.uk etc)

But it's on their main site Expedia.com

Here's their T/C's: http://www.expedia.com/Checkout/BitcoinTermsAndConditions


Expedia
Bitcoin Terms & Conditions

These Bitcoin Terms & Conditions (“Terms & Conditions”) apply to your use of Bitcoin as your selected payment method. Please read these Terms & Conditions carefully. By using Bitcoin as your method of payment, you acknowledge and agree to be bound by these Terms & Conditions. These Terms & Conditions apply in addition to the terms and conditions contained in our Website Terms of Use. If there is a conflict between these Terms & Conditions and our Website Terms of Use with respect to Bitcoin transactions, these Terms & Conditions apply. If you do not agree with all of these Terms & Conditions, do not select Bitcoin as your payment method.
Paying with Bitcoin

Powered by Coinbase. Our acceptance of Bitcoin is powered by our partner, Coinbase. We do not guarantee and are not responsible for the availability of Coinbase’s services. To complete your booking, you will be re-directed to Coinbase’s website, where you will see the total cost of your booking in Bitcoin, based on an exchange rate set by Coinbase. The Bitcoin price for your booking will remain valid for 10 minutes. If you do not initiate a payment during this time, the Bitcoin exchange rate will be updated and the Bitcoin price for your booking may change.

Bitcoin network transaction fees. As with nearly all Bitcoin transactions, a very small transaction fee (a “miner’s fee”) will be added by the Bitcoin network to the total cost in Bitcoin of your booking if you are sending Bitcoin from a non-Coinbase wallet. This fee covers the cost of verifying Bitcoin transactions. Expedia has no control over this fee and does not receive any portion of the fee.

Bitcoin transactions are final. Once you initiate a Bitcoin transaction, you cannot cancel it (provided however that you may seek a refund per our refund policy described below). This is inherent in the nature of the Bitcoin network, not a policy set by Expedia.

Under payments and over payments. If, using a Coinbase wallet, you attempt to initiate a payment of Bitcoins different from the exact cost of the booking indicated by Coinbase, your booking will not complete. If, using a non-Coinbase wallet, you initiate a payment of Bitcoins different from the exact cost (plus miner’s fees) of the booking indicated by Coinbase your booking will not complete however your payment maybe processed by the Bitcoin network, in which case your payment will be refunded by Coinbase. After a failed payment you will be required to re-submit payment for the correct amount in order to complete the booking and the Bitcoin exchange rate may update.

Transactions complete once confirmed. Once a Bitcoin transaction is submitted to the Bitcoin network, it will be unconfirmed for a period of time (usually about an hour, but sometimes longer) pending full verification of the transaction by the Bitcoin network. A transaction is not complete until it is fully verified.
Refunds

Whether your booking qualifies for a refund is governed by our Website Terms of Use, regardless of whether you pay with Bitcoin or any other payment method. In order to claim a refund on a booking paid for with Bitcoin, you will have to follow certain procedures in order to claim your refund, as explained below.

A valid email address and a Coinbase account are required for refunds. Your refund will be issued through Coinbase, and you must have, or create, a Coinbase account in order to receive the refund. Coinbase will send a refund notification email to the email address associated with your Expedia booking (if you were signed in at booking, your Expedia account email address; otherwise, the email address you provided at checkout). Providing a valid email address that you are able to access is important, as it is a condition for receiving your refund. If you do not have a Coinbase account associated with the email address to which the refund email was sent, the refund notification email will explain how to access a Coinbase account automatically created on your behalf to claim your refund. If you fail to access your Coinbase account and/or complete the steps outlined in the refund notification email within 30 days, the funds will be returned to Expedia. If the refund notification email is sent to an email address associated with an existing Coinbase account, the refund will automatically be credited by Coinbase to the associated Coinbase account. You acknowledge that, if you are unable to (1) access the email address associated with your booking or (2) use the Coinbase service or access a Coinbase account, you will not be able to receive a refund for your booking.

Refunds issued for the USD value of your booking. Your refund will be issued by Coinbase in Bitcoin for the USD value of your booking, less any applicable fees, including any cancellation fees. Your refund will be converted from USD to Bitcoin based on an exchange rate set by Coinbase at the time you initiate the refund through our Website. You acknowledge that if the value of Bitcoin against USD has risen since the time of your purchase, you will receive less Bitcoin than you paid at the time of booking.

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Enjoy your holiday LeMiner! Will make my hotel bookings via Expedia too.

They have a market cap of over $9.5Bil in 2013 making it the largest company to accept Bitcoin to date. Though suspect Ebay/Paypal will follow shortly.

2014/2015 in retrospect, will be seen as great merchant growth/acceptance for Bitcoin adoption.

Good work BB!

Following Coindesk's initial report, an EDIT was made to the article with comments from Expedia:

“Bitcoin is a great example of how Expedia is investing early in an array of payment options to give our customers and partners more choice in the ways they interact with us,” the company said in a press release announcing the move.

Expedia said bitcoin will be integrated into the payment options for customers at check-out, sitting alongside payment methods like PayPal and Visa.

“Customers simply indicate bitcoin as their method of payment and then follow a few steps to safely and securely complete each transaction,” the company said.

http://www.coindesk.com/expedia-will-accept-bitcoin-hotel-bookings/

I think they will fairly quickly. They have clearly done their homework on it and it might just be a matter of how to account for it and tax treatment. As a currency it is still kind of in a grey area with taxation.

There will be a lot of merchant adoption this year.  They are converting 100% to fiat however.  We need to move on to phase 2 where they start holding between 1-10% of there btc income.

Really good news. A lot of good stuff is flying in recently, even little things like BTC being added to Google finance charts. I think it will be a gradual rise from here on...

It does effect price in the long run.
If they hold it, which is stupid from business side, they are pumping value of bitcoin, creating baloon. Baloons are bad mkay? After some time, all baloons explode, and alot of ppl get's hurt.
If they pass it on, they do not affect price (to spend bitcoin you have to buy so price will stay same). Most of ppl that buy BTC, if not all, will buy little bit more than they need. That will slowly pump up price, and as more and more people come in, price will go up and stay up, unlke with baloons. No explosions, no bad press, no blood (bitcoin blood that is). Only all around satisfaction.

So i say, please, receive and pass it on to others. Dont create baloons by holding, bitcoin has already enough of that (all the early adopters are holding as tight as they can). If we want healthy and steady gow, we need real world application, and switching from hand to hand. From user to business, back to user. Not holding...

Just booked a hotel, works flawlessly and much faster than using a creditcard. They use coinbase as backend.

anothe victory for the bitcoin!
Im just waiting for this posts to show up, its always fun to see what company has accepted btc.
Soon enough everything is buyable with bitcoin, i believe!
Thanks for the heads up post.

This is great news. There seems to be a lot of this recently. Bitcoin and travel are made for eachother.

I am on their site right now trying to check out and there is no option for Bitcoin.

When I called their 800 number and got routed to the Philippines, I had a fairly hilarious discussion with the phone rep who had no idea what i was talking about.

Super.

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Update:   I was talking to Hotel Sales.   She had no clue.  I asked to speak to a supervisor.  She comes back and tells me to go to Coinbase.com.  

Sigh.  

She said they have received no information or training on how to handle Bitcoin, and that it must be done on the website only.

I told her I was on the website and it wasn't there.

She said "We dont handle the currency conversion here".  She said that a few times.  I have no idea what she's talking about.

Then she offered to transfer me to customer service.   "You're not customer service?" I said (I called the customer service number).  "Nope!" she said.

I can already tell this is going to be an adventure.   On hold now.

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Ok so after getting transferred to 7 phone reps (none of which could pronounce Bitcoin), it is apparently showing for some hotels and not for others.

The one I was reserving - it did not show.  So we both escalated a ticket to the support group.

However if the phone experience is any indication, the support team isn't going to have a clue either.

I use Expedia, so I guess it's a huge plus for me. Fast, efficient, and money saving. Might help bump up the Bitcoin price, but will definitely bump up the knowledge of Bitcoin.

I want to see that some special offers and high end luxury hotel only accept bitcoin payment exclusively

I don't think this will effect the price in the long run however it is great to see the Corporations
are picking up bitcoin. My question is are they just dumping it on the Market or are they holding
it and watching the value grow.

I believe they are limiting it to hotels first and expanding depending on how that goes.

Which is fine, http://www.cheapair.com is good for booking flights in bitcoin.

Paying for hotels is very much needed, it would have saved me about $200 in exchange fees for my hotel stay on my last trip.

my goal as well, but thing is.. overstock is huge, even if you haven't heard of it. expedia is big as well though.

This is absolutely fantastic. The price will keep going up when different retailers begin to take Bitcoin.

More and more companies show their loalty to bitcoin and i like this trend!!