7 On Your Side helps woman who double booked trip get refund

PALO ALTO, Calif. (KGO) -- When you shop online, how can you be sure your order has gone through? A Palo Alto woman had that question when she was booking a vacation and got an error message.

Many of us get nervous entering our sensitive data, including credit card numbers. When you hit the send button, it can feel like a leap of faith and in this case, she hit it twice and got double the trouble.

Paula and David Collins wanted to splurge on a nice vacation. "We decided we would go to Florida. We've never been in Florida," Paula said.

What they didn't want to do is pay for it twice. "I was like whoa," David said, laughing.

"Yeah, I was very upset," Paula said.

Here's why. Paula was booking a vacation package to Orlando on Expedia.com when an error message popped up on the screen.

"Your transaction didn't go through. The system went down," Paula recalled it saying.

So later, she tried booking it again. "And I got the error again, but I was afraid of going back again."

It's a good thing she didn't, because each of those supposedly failed attempts eventually worked.

"I saw one coming through. I said, 'Oh good, finally,' then I saw the other. I said, 'Oh no, both went through. It's not possible, what happened,'" Paula said.

Paula was booked twice for the same trip -- $2,100 each. She frantically called Expedia, which canceled the extra airfare and rentals but claimed their Disney World tickets were not refundable.

They had to pay $1,000 for tickets they didn't need.

"Expedia insisted that those tickets were good for six months, you can go back, but I live in California," Paula said.

Instead, she contacted 7 On Your Side. We found out the tickets actually were refundable and Expedia gave their money back after all, which made their trip to the magic castle even more magical.

"Oh, I was so excited and so grateful," Paula said.

Expedia apologized for the computer glitch and the delay in getting a refund. We'd like to point out that although Disney is the parent company of ABC7, that had nothing to do with us getting Paula her refund -- the tickets were refundable anyways.

This case is a good reminder to be careful when you hit the send button and don't hit it twice.