I have had plenty of terrible experience with expedia. First of all, you will have to pay at the time of booking. If you book directly with the hotels, most of the time you don't have to pay until you check out. Secondly, I checked quite a few times with hotels, expedia is NOT cheaper! Thirdly, there are times the expedia website shows there is hot tub in the hotel, but there isn't. My recent experience with expedia was that the swimming pool in the hotel I booked was filthy and expedia wouldn't even want to talk to the hotel about it. After my persistence, they accepted the talk to the front desk. But the hotel front desk people were lying - 'the water is very clean and there are people swimming in it right now'. The truth is - there were no people swimming in the pool at all! I told expedia 'i can send you a picture of the pool if you give me an e. mail address'. No, they were not interested. BTW, that hotel is Campbell Inn. Don't stay there, horrible.
I will never ever book with expedia again.