Complaint Review: Airfare.com - Wholesale Travel Center - Falls Church Virginia

So far I have had 2 terrible experiences with this company from only one purchase. I bought a round trip ticket from them to a caribbean country. I was supposed to have 2 flights to my final destination. However, my first flight was changed to having a couple hour layover in Florida. I never received anything from airfare.com telling me that my flight had been changed. The change in flights left me with only 15 minutes between flights in San Juan. The connecting flight was through Liat, and it is their policy that you must check in 45 minutes before the flight, so obviously there was no chance of me making my connecting flight. In addition, I was expected to pick my luggage up, and check in at Liat's desk, go through security and this was all supposed to happen in 15 minutes. I was now stranded in San Juan.

After talking to the very nice and helpful representative at Liat, I was told that there were no available flights to get me to my destination for 2 days. Even then the Liat rep, informed me that the only way to get to my destination was to take a 4 more flights, but Liat did not have any availability for the first leg, and he directed me to American Air/American Eagle. I was able to purchase a ticket from AA/AE and then purchased the remainder of the flights from Liat. The total additional cost out of my pocket, was about $520 (the whole trip through airfare.com was only supposed to be $998).

Because I was stranded in San Juan for 2 days, I also needed to pay for lodging, transportation to and from the airport, and food. Luckily I found some other people in a similar situation and was able to share the cost with them, but I still spent an additional $130. After this I still had to overnight in Antigua, at an additional cost of $50.

Once I finally got to my destination, got settled and dealt with the mess that resulted from me being 3 days late, I attempted to contact airfare.com. The first time I called I spoke with a representative, who informed me that he could not do anything for me. He told me that I needed to contact a supervisor at ext 209. I tried calling that extension. No one picked up and the system kicked me back to the beginning of the system. There was no option to leave a message for the supervisor. The next time I called, I spoke with a different rep, who told me that I shouldn't call ext 209 but 211. I attempted to call that extension and had the same experience as I had when I had tried to reach ext 209. I tried to reach a supervisor about another 15 times at varying times, and never spoke with a supervisor. I eventually accepted that I would have to accept all the extra money I had spent to get to my destination.

As the return part of my trip has come closer, I decided to check the status of my reservation online. I promptly discovered that the first leg of my return trip had been cancelled. Once again, airfare.com had not informed me of the change. When I tried to contact them, the rep told me that I could email a supervisor, but did not give me the email address. The rep spoke in broken English, and was overall quite rude. He said they would email me with an update. I asked for a supervisor and he replied that there were none. I told him I would be contacting the Better Business Bureau, and the rep did not care. As of now, I have still not received any update from airfare.com.

I have since filed a report with the Better Business Bureau.

This has been the worst experience I have ever had with a travel company, and probably my worst experience with any form of customer service.

Andre

Petersburg, Pennsylvania

U.S.A.