FlyThere4less.com Possibly the latest victim of FlyThere4less.Com Internet

Okay, so my situation is a bit different from other disgruntled customers. Yesterday morning--while I was still patiently waiting for my ticket to be issued after booking a flight on Saturday, November 6, 2010, 430PM--I found out that I had to leave for my home country, the Philippines, a week before my originally scheduled flight date. This was because of an emergency situation that I desperately have to take care of. Since I was expecting (based on other disgruntled customers' comments) the website to e-mail me and tell me they had to increase the fare at the last minute, I figured I'd just let them do that and wait for the deadline for confirming my flight to pass. Well, the company emailed me today at 2AM. They issued my ticket and in their e-mail, the amount to be charged to my credit card was the same as the price listed on the internet. So I had no way out of the arrangement. I checked my itinerary on the website of Delta, the carrier of my flight. My only problem was how to rebook my flight, since I had to go home earlier, right?

I called them this morning. It turned out that the customer service hotline was outsourced to my home country, the Philippines. Sweet. So I talked to the customer service representative in my own language. She initially said she could rebook my flight for an extra charge. I asked her if there was a way she could subtract the penalty from the cost of the airfare for my new flight. After all, it would be cheaper to fly home in early December, as opposed to after mid-December. She said she couldn't do that because of the value of my original ticket. So I asked her if she could void the entire ticket--something that Delta Airlines would have done, anyway, if I had gotten my ticket from them directly. She claimed that the company didn't normally do this, but said she could do that for as long as I paid the cancellation fee ($25) and booked another flight through them. I'm wondering if this was their bait-and-switch method, so to speak. Anyhow, I finally agreed to book a flight through them because she said my ticket couldn't be refunded otherwise. She said they'd process my new ticket and refund the full amount of my old ticket and charge my credit card for both the amount of my new ticket and the cancellation fee.

I'm still waiting for my new ticket to be issued. She said she would check if the fare ($1870.83) was still available. I'm wondering if they would increase it, which I hope they don't. I just figured that would be a better deal--voiding my original ticket (which cost $2155.03) and getting a new one--than rebooking my flight. After all, if I had to pay the rebooking fee (Delta charges $250 and I don't know what a "travel agency" like Flythere4less.com would charge) in addition to the amount of my original ticket, it would cost even more. I'm a student, so my budget is extremely limited.

The moral of the story: You can't avoid emergencies. But to be safer, book directly with an airline.