Hello,
Below is my experience, I shopped through a popular website and got their telephone number and address to book Air tickets for my Wife and 19month old son from Atlanta to India (Purchased 2 tickets).
My family (Wife & Kid) were supposed to leave in late september to india from atlanta. The return was not formalized so was shopping for a 6 month ticket for the return trip. We Intially planned a return date of Jan 17th as this was not rock solid, I wanted a 6 month ticket to later change with a nominal airline change fee as normal.
My family's plans for return were finalized to return on March 2nd week, I called the travel agent to get the changes done. The travel agent (All my intial dealings were with this Lady by name PAM) quoted me a $350 per ticket for the change fee (Actually $200 charged by the Airline) for a total of $700 for my wife and now my close to 2 year old son.
I knew that they were charging me way off from the regular airline change fee, Since i was very busy with my work and had no time to directly deal with the airline and be on hold for a long period of time, I agreed for the change fee of $700 for both the tickets for my family to return on march 2nd week.
The lady (Travel agent PAM) did not accept any credit cards and told me to deposit the amount into bank of america account provide by them, Since I am a conslutant always travelling I had no Bank of America branch close to me. I told her that i will get the amount deposited the comming saturday once i get back home to which she accepted.
She calls me back within few hours and states that I cannot extend the ticket to March since the ticket she sold me was only valid for 4 months and If i still wanted my family to return in March I have to buy a 2 one way ticktes from India to atlanta costing me few grand.
I was pissed off when i heard and argued as to why i was mis-informed that it was a 6 month ticket and was not told earlier and how did she agree to change the ticket for $700 and why did she lie to me while selling the original ticket as a 6 month ticket and actually selling me a 4 month ticket.
She calls her collegue by name nazlin on the phone and starts abusing me and behaving very rudely. I also told her that i had a mail from pam indicating she sold me a 6 month ticket and not a 4 month ticket. Unfortunately I do not have any proof, I gues i might have deleted the mails they might have sent to my email account except for the itenary which i have it preserved.
The other best thing is that with the help & advice of my collegues I got the issue solved by directly calling the airline spending hours and changing as needed but ended up paying a very hefty amount for the total change but less than the amount quoted by the travel agent.
I just want consumers to be aware of to know better of their travel agent before falling into a pit and later realizing that they have been scammed.
Thanks,
Angara
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