[Resolved] CheapoAir.com and Travelation.com / bait and switch!
I tried to book airline ticket on cheapoair.com and the price they showed me was very cheap, so I tried to book it, but everytime I try, it states that this ticket is no longer available, so I go back and pick another flight number and time and same thing. I did this 5 times and yet none of them were available. I didn't continue because the next price for the ticket was twice more than what I was looking at.
I had the same problem at travelation.com. This is a bait and switch that these travel sites use to get customers to purchase high priced tickets - I have read many posts on the internet about these companies using this type of fraud.
DON'T USE CHARPOAIR or TRAVELATION.com!!!
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Resolution statement
Customer care service did everything in their power to resolve this complaint. All attempts to contact the complainant have failed. Therefore, this complaint has been annulled and must not be considered where image of the company in question and it's services are concerned.
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CheapOair Customer Care's Response, May 29, 2014
This blog site is not for travelation...please remove posting and put on the correct companies site.
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Date
They confirmed my reservation and then when we went to the airport, the reservation was there but no ticket number so the airlines couldn't issue us tickets. I'm used to confirmations securing the tickets.
I also had big problems with Travelation. They sent a letter headlined "TICKET CONFIRMATION" which turned out not to be a confirmation at all. They blamed the problem on me and it cost me a lot of money! I spoke to them at length and they were rude, condescending, and dishonest.
Love you people who complain without knowing the facts. There is no bait and switch, you have no idea what you are talking about. Availability of flights is controlled by the airlines and although over 98.5% of the time the flights shown on ANY travel site is correct, there is that 1.5-2% of the time where the airline did not update its inventory fast enough and what looks available may not be, VERY COMMON DURING PEAK TRAVEL SEASONS. EVERY TRAVEL SITE HAS THIS ISSUE, IT IS AN ACROSS THE BOARD PROBLEM ON EVERY SITE.
Before jumping to conclusions and starting to slander immediately any travel site, educate yourself on how sites really work. Most of the traveling public has no idea how these companies run and to see instant vitriol/slander like this is uncalled for and just plain incorrect!!!
lastly, when you called these sites, were you rude, obnoxious and condescending yourself??? Do you think it's easy dealing with 100's of people daily hearing their whining all day long?? Granted it's their job, but it is a very difficult job. no matter how hard any company tries, there will always be malcontents.
1st off... this is a common issue with airline inventory and not usually the fault of any of the online sites. BUT in regards to these sites They are by far NOT the cheapest! They mislead people by showing you a lower fare in the results and it is not until the end that you see the final total. I have compared them to www.Allcheapfares.com and www.justairfare.com which are consolidator run sites and if you only compare the result.. THEY APPEAR cheaper.. when in fact they are not!
I tried to book a flight on Travelation and it kept on not going through. It continued saying, "The airlines are unable to confirm your flight." SO I tried and tried 4-5x. Finally, since my employer was paying $2050 toward a summer flight home, got a totally different itinerary with some stops in between. I tried to book from the Middle East to Bangkok, to Honolulu and home. The ticket went through for $2500 and I got a conf. #. I was ecstatic that it all worked out and booked a flt from Bangkok to Phuket and back, and a room in Honolulu. Then I got an email from Travelation telling me the airlines were unable to guarantee the flights and nothing was booked and nothing was charged to my credit card (after getting a confirmation #!!) SO I called the 619 area code number and talked to a stern woman who repeated, "The airlines are responsible for updating fares. We are not responsible." She looked at fares for my exact same $2500 ticket that was posted online and the ACTUAL FARE was over $5000! Forget it! So I told her thanks, but no thanks. NOw I am stuck with a domestic flt in Thailand and a hotel room in Hawaii! I will never book through them again but went back to Travelocity and did a simple trip home. IT was total "bait and switch."
I think it should be called Travelicious b/c it is about as useful as those lame dating websites!!!
Travelation.com / smartfares.com/ airgorilla.com / cheapoair.com / justasia.com / jetsetdeals.com...all handled by the same company Travel Support Center Inc. in San Diego, California. I know, I worked in that call center for the past 10+ months. One thing that Frank Modesto is right is that those poor call center agents take the blame for a very poorly mismanaged company. The websites are useless. There are high call volumes as no one is getting what they see online and so they call and wait on hold only to be told the fare is much higher or unavailable. And even worse...what they do is the following: within 24 hrs of a customer buying a ticket in the website they will reprice the ticket and if the fare is lower they will rerun the ticket at the lower price and recharge the difference as an "airfare balance". Not even calling the card holder to see if they can run the credit card again.
They also have a problem with page expiring. A customer will think the page expired after inputing their credit card information. So they try again and again when in reality they are all getting reserved and their credit card is being charged every time. This is a big problem they cant or wont fix. They will void for a fee but either way those funds are frozen by your credit card for 7-10 business days.
There are an endless slew of bad practices at this company. I have never ever worked at such a fraudulant place. I finally spoke out and was laid off due to low call volume. Huh...makes ya think right?
Sorry on my last comment, second paragraph. On those page expiry reservations they will void for FREE but those funds are held for 7-10 business days. Very inconvenient especially if you used your debit card. It should not be happening period. I would ask myself, "I wonder if expedia has the same problem". I dont think so.
Also, for those of you with those airfare balance charges and dont agree your card being charged without your autorization. Call your credit card and dispute the charges. Dont sign any memorandums. The credit card companies will soon realize this company has a serious problem and call them on it. Sooner or later they will learn to leave people's credit cards alone!
Nothing like a so-called disgruntled employee who works for 10 months for "fraudsters" supposedly yet this person stays working with them all that time? Then, all of a sudden, the company is bad?? if they were so bad, why stay 10 months? why not blow the whistle 6 months ago and start blogging holy hell then?? you got laid off and you're mad, stop crapping over people, please, we can see right through to you. I would be leary of any alleged ex employee bad-mouthing who they worked for for almost a year. Blogs sometimes are nothing more than people being vindictive and want "revenge." If you are going to blog, use it for legitimate reasons, not for your own personal agenda. these people obviously paid for your salary for all that time. Can't be all that bad.
i agree cheapoair and travel one in partner ship with travelong is the biggest fraud company ever .
lemme tell you onething guys, , dnt ever book reservations with cheapoair, they are fraud and charge people without giving a thought on how we earn money, i request all americans and canadians cooperate and put your comments against this fraud website . Thier office is located in newyork 213 west 35 th street and flamingo street las vegas.Owned by an indian the operational activities takes place from gurgaon india so that no one catch the ripp offers .Guys do something or atleast bring it to the notice federal government
I went to but three airline tickets from Travelation- we had an emergency and had to leave the following day. I received a confirmation number and was told they would send me a reservation number from the airlines within 24 hrs- the departure time was 4:20pm i didn't receive anything until 2 hrs prior to the departure time stating the airlines was "unable to confirm my reservation" thankfully I knew this wouldn't work so I ended up buying the tickets straight off the airlines website and within 2 mins I received an email giving me the confirmation/reservation number. Never will I ever use Travelation nor will I ever recommend it to anyone- I don't know how these people are still in business. DONT USE THEM! I suggest Expedia or buying tickets off the airlines website its allot safer.
I made a reservation thru Travelation and when I entered the credit card info there was a clear statement on their website page that non-US Credit Cards were not acceptable. Having seen that I thought the reservation would not go thru but, in fact, it did. Because I did not want problems with my Credit Card, I contacted Travelation to cancel the reservation and they replied thru an exchange of multiple emails that the cancellation was not possible. Travelation violated their own regulations and now I find myself in a position where they told me I had to cancel the reservation with the airline. I am now thinking that I should contact a lawyer to determine my legal position to force Travelation to cancel this reservation. Any comments would be appreciated.
Hello,
My name is Emanuela and I purchase airline tickets through travelation and I recieved my confirmation within 5 min on a Sunday evening on 02/26/2012. Of course I didnt get the tickets yet, because there are no funds in my credit card. But I dont think as of yet, there are no problems with them. If I do have any problems getting my airline tickets, I will repost and see what happens
I went online to book tickets to PUERTO RICO and I read that it said you can change your tickets within 24 hrs, I realzied I had the wrong dates, went back to the site, tried calling and of course NO answering machine. By the time I finally go someone it was over the 24 hr period, I called the airline at this point they wanted 150 to change a date on the ticket that was within the week that i was travelling, and the I would have to pay a total of 1, 616. additional on a $248 dollar ticket. This is ludicris and I will never go back to travelation again. Then you wonder why people tend to stay home or drive or take a train to where they have to go. Also, The first person i did get did not speak english his engish was so poor I could not understand him. There was no help there!!! I have all the emails from them and that did no good either. I was told OH ITI S ALL THE AIRLINES FAULT. you think they see that their email was sent after the 24 hour period the confirmation Email/. This is a scam so you can not adjust your flight /. NEVER USE THIS SITE>
Worst Company Ever
I don't know how anybody could call this website/affiliate of LBF travel a good company. Read the reviews. I first hand experienced the worst customer service of my life with this company. They claim to book a flight, then book a wrong flight. Then they claim to book another flight, and book one on a completely different day. Then they claim to reimburse you over and over again, but never give you your money back. This company is a BIG SCAM and I would avoid it at all costs. Use fly.com, travelzoo, travelocity, anything but travelation and cheapfares. They are both part of LBF Travel and are obviously scammers.
Scammer,
I booked a flight yesterday and received a confirmation letter with the flight code. I went to MyReservation and checked, so my status is still pending. Last night this [censored]rs charged me USD150 and when I checked my reservation, guess what>>>CANCELLED!
My card was charged saying I authorized a purchase at ARC (w/c according to the bank is in San Diego).
SCAMMERS! This will come back to your families A**H****S!!!
TRAVELATION === SCAM
WHY (my true story):
1. I went to theirs website and saw price for my flight (few bucks less than $1000).
2. I entered all data and after clicking purchase on the next page I was told that I must send them scans of my credit card and passport to buy the tickets. (Looks like a scam already, isn't it?).
3. Then I called them to ask what is this for. An indian accent woman answered that they needed it to process my card...
4. !!! Also she told me that the price of flight is no longer the same - now IT WAS $200 HIGHER than it was when I was clicking "Purchase" on the form.
5. At this point I realized that this is SCAM. And asked to cancel my order. She agreed but told me that I will be charged with $150 for cancelling it.
6. I insisted on my position and had to talk with 3 more people at their company (EVERYONE THERE HAS INDIAN ACCENT AND IS RUDE TO CLIENTS). But it gave me no results and all of them suggested me to cancel order and pay these $150.
RESULT:
I spent totally of 5 hours on using website and talking to ### on the phone. $150 was charged for no service and spending my own time.
NEXT DAY:
I went to local office of airplane company and bought the SAME TICKET for only $20 more expensive than on theirs website.
THIS PROVES THAT:
1. THEY DECEIVE CUSTOMERS BY INFLATING PRICES.
2. The are stupid indian (or alike) ###.
Same thing happened to me. They will rob you in broad daylight. they're good at it! That's what they do for living!
Bodia had the exact same experience as I, just that I cancelled the credit card before they were able to charge for their useless "services". Avoid Travelation at all costs, don't try them out, don't think our cases are just a fluke, you'll regret it, you really will. It's best to learn from other people's mistakes, trust me :-)
TRAVELATION is not BBB accredited and with good reason. I lost $230 to a bait and switch. I reported them to the Calif Attorney General and hope others who have been scammed do the same. Google TRAVELATION scam for other sad stories. Stick with more reputable travel agencies and avoid TRAVELATION if you value your money.