On a regular basis, our agency gets calls from travelers who ask us to match or beat an online price. Sometimes we can beat the prices and sometimes we can’t. Or, sometimes passengers call when they have booked online and are having problems. In those cases, we usually can’t help them even if we wanted to do so.
The majority of travelers who book online actually don’t experience that many big problems. But, there are a number of potential small annoyances that seem to crop up regularly, and some of them can become disasters. If only one of out 20 people has a real issue, it’s fine unless you happen to be that passenger.
If travelers do decide to book online, here are a few things that the site probably won’t mention prominently or make absolutely clear. These five issues don’t come from hours spent perusing airline websites. I’ve learned about these impending problems after speaking with hundreds of passengers who tried to save a buck on their airfare and ended up facing unexpected problems and turned to my agency for help.
1. Confusion over code-shares. These days for example with United, there are over a dozen carriers that can be booked as United flights. Everything from Lufthansa and US Air, to Egypt Air to Air Portugal. (Note in screen shot detail at top of this story — both identical flights by Delta and Air France at 5:40 p.m. and 10:55 p.m. are listed. On this initial screen there is no clue as to which airline is actually operating the flight.)
In fact, due to code-shares it is quite possible to book a ticket on a particular airline, take several flights, and never actually fly on that airline.
Some people don’t care with whom they fly, but others care a great deal. And in some cases, it can lead to a great deal of confusion at the airport. (Not to mention what happens if passengers end up on a partner airline that goes on strike.)
2. Passport and visa issues. We hear a lot of those. A parent hasn’t heard they need a passport for their child, a website didn’t tell a Mexican citizen they needed a visa for Australia. The list goes on.
3. Connection issues. Minimum connecting time is an inexact science. And an inexperienced traveler may not realize, for example, that the 45 minute connecting time in Frankfurt is ridiculously optimistic. Or, that changing terminals in Heathrow and Charles DeGaulle always takes longer than passengers think.
4. Airport issues. A nice young woman contacted me about her first trip to Europe and I offered to look into fares for her. After I sent her a few options she emailed back that she decided to go with a $90 cheaper fare she found online.
What the website didn’t tell her — a connection time of less than an hour at JFK on the outbound, especially at a time when a major runway closure has resulted in regular serious delays, is a recipe for disaster. Since they are connecting from a small commuter carrier to a mainline carrier, there is a real chance of missing the connection and thus a day in Europe.
Other airport issues are more seasonal — Denver can have snow until May and Chicago, New York airport and Boston have late afternoon thundershowers seemingly more often than not in the summer.
5. Correct names. If travelers talk to a human and tell them their name is Peggy or Bill, most reservation or travel agents will ask, “Is that REALLY the name on your driver’s license?” Websites don’t. Ditto most websites won’t correct obvious typos. This means mistakes get ticketed and they aren’t easy to change.
There are also a number of issues where the information is on the site, but it is either not obvious, or it is easy to make false assumptions. This comes into play regarding penalties and change fees. Another issue we frequently get calls on is with travelers who expect they can pay a standard $150-250 change fee, but then discover that the site has a different more restrictive policy.
In short, booking tickets online means being your own travel agent. Passengers have no one to blame if things goes wrong. So perhaps, it’s not “buyer beware,” but it’s definitely “buyer be careful.”
Janice Hough is a California-based travel agent a travel blogger and a part-time comedy writer. A frequent flier herself, she’s been doing battle with airlines, hotels, and other travel companies for over three decades. Besides writing for Travelers United, Janice has a humor blog at Leftcoastsportsbabe.com (Warning, the political and sports humor therein does not represent the views of anyone but herself.)
