Losing confidence in Expedia

I've been using Expedia for many years. Everytime someone touts some
new travel site I find that Expedia finds the very same fares.

My confidence in Expedia, though, has been shaken with two recent
experiences.

I booked travel from PHL to ATL and was stunned to find that same day
that Delta's fare at Delta.com was more than $100 less. Expedia showed
the same Delta flights--they just had a much higher price!

Now I am looking to travel to ORD in July. Expedia turned in a fare of
$172 for American. When I went to American's website the *same*
flights were $158. In both cases I was requesting the cheapest, most
restricted fares.

What is going on? Are airlines starting to withold their best fares
from Expedia? Has anyone had similar experiences?

I many times in the past have found that airlines web sites had better
fares, as sometimes they were giving discounts on the lowest fares that
have been found on a site such, as Expedia or Travelocity. Also some
times they offer a certain low fare on their site and will not let
Expedia or Travelocity sell it.

At the same time I am finding that if you book airfare + hotel through
say one 2 sites mentioned that you can save some money, but this is not
always the case. Sometimes they want you to think that you are saving
some money, when really all they are offering is a package with 2 or
more items (e.g. airfare and hotel) at published prices and not always
the lowest published prices.

For me I like using Travelocity or Expedia as a starting point for
researching airfares. After that I check an airline's web site to see
if they can beat or at least meet the price offered elsewhere. Most
times they can while on other occasions they cannot. I have seen the
latter to be the case with Orbitz. Also as stated above package deals
from some of the online travel agency sites can provide great
discounts.

Michael