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Help Needed: Using discount travel sites to purchase airline tickets

Albertan ski girl

Angel Diva
In 2012, I booked our trip to Austria through Expedia. Not again. I landed in the hospital and could not board the plane for the trip home. That flight was on a German airline, who refused to change the date because I had booked through Expedia and they told me if I had booked through them directly they would have. I contacted them directly and called and emailed Expedia. I had to book an additional ticket to go home, losing the missed flight. Fortunately I had trip insurance, but if I hadn't it would have been an $1800 loss, because of no lead time, etc.

And Expedia at least is not one of the real off book places.


For booking vacation packages (flight+hotel etc), I almost always use travel agents because if there are any issues, it is almost always easier to have them deal with it.

However, for booking airplane tickets I always use whatever is the cheapest. If you go the online route - expedia cheapoair etc, until your departure day, you have to make all changes through the site. However, once you depart, the airline is responsible for you. And they should be able to do all of the changes you request. As the daughter of an airline employee (my mom worked for KLM for almost 40 years), I have become very wary of how airlines try to shirk responsibility and thrust it upon the online sites. @sibhusky - what happened to you - if you had started your trip already - shouldn't have. You had already started the first half of your trip, which meant you became the responsibility of the airlines. Even if you booked through expedia, they still have to allow (within fare class allowances) you to change the date. Or if you are not going to fly, they still owe you the credit on that flight for the same class. And you shoudl always be able to use that credit if you pay a standard fare change fee. What the airline did was totally not right.
 

sibhusky

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
The problem I had was compounded by being in a hospital ward, without access to other than a borrowed laptop, and even reaching an English speaker on the phone. Then, the reason I was in there was an abscessed tonsil, so I could barely talk. Condor was the airline. Didn't matter if I had a note from the hospital, I had to go through Expedia to make changes. Repeated email and voice interactions with both got me to the same place. No refund. Had to buy extremely pricey one way tickets home for myself and my daughter (total was $3600). Without the trip insurance I would have been out of pocket. Certainly won't fly them again, and certainly won't book through Expedia again. (I've had several hotel booking problems with them as well over the years.). I'll use them for research, that's it.
 

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