Late last year my wife and I had a particularly bad experience with an online travel agency…and because it so nearly wrecked an opportunity to spend a weekend together when I was working out of town for a month AND they tried to gaslight us about it when I wrote a review on their website, I am gonna tell you about it again, here on the Blue Ribbon Team.
You will note that their ribbon is not blue. It is the dreaded Black Ribbon of this Sucks. If you haven’t looked around here to know, that Ribbon means I recommend avoiding the company at all costs. For what my opinion is worth.
So on to the story.
I am out of town for work…attending some classes as I recall. The missus and I are missing each other, so we decide that it would be nice for her to fly down and spend the weekend with me. We travel a bit and have learned to hunt around online and find good deals. Its late in the game though, so the hunting is slim.
She runs across a company called Cheap Flights Fares. They have a decent rate on a first class flight that fits our schedules, so she buys tickets (during business hours). She goes to bed that evening thinking everything is fine and in a couple days she will be flying down to see me.
In middle of the night she is woke up by her phone ringing. When she answers, they tell her that the flight she bought tickets from them on was already booked, but that they can move her to coach for the same first class price, OR they can move her to another flight for WAY more. Coincidentally, this price was about the same as what was publicly available without one of these resellers back when she booked during the day.
Now the wife is a pretty smart cookie so saw through this obvious bait and switch maneuver, demanded they cancel the purchase and give her a full refund, and then she went online to Priceline who saved the day and got here set up with a flight under more honorable conditions.
When she told me about it, I of course did what I do and wrote a fine Karen like review describing this scenario.
Rather than reaching out and trying to fix the situation. CheapFlightFares decided the best course of action was to gaslight us and try to make it look like we were idiots who didn’t know who they had done business with. Here is their reply:
“Greetings from Cheapflightsfares.com. We are writing to you in reference to the Google review you posted. We studied your concern and tried to fetch your reservation details. We attempted to retrieve your reservation using the email address provided via the complaint and with your first & the last name (separately) as the passenger and credit card holder but were unable to locate it. We would request you to make sure if your reservation was booked via cheapflightsfares.com. If it was, we would request you to provide us your Cheapflightsfares booking reference number or the confirmation email, so that we may retrieve the details of your booking, interact with you and resolve the dissatisfaction presented. Though after going through the details of your complaint, we see it highly probable that your experience may be for a similarly named organization and due to the names being similar, you have placed a complaint for cheapflightsfares.com; in error. In case you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to write to us at care@cheapflightsfares.com or contact our customer support team @ +1 216 302 2732 anytime. Regards, Cheapflightsfares.com”
I about lost it. Instead I edited my review to add:
“Edited for clarity. My wife bought a ticket in her name. The lie of a reply they are posting is just a cover. Anyone who wants to see the evidence can email me directly through the review and I will supply all documents. There are phone records and emails besides our screenshots, so keep playing”
Needless to say, we haven’t heard from them since.
So here I am being a good consumer and warning you about a bad business. I hope you do the same.
Caveat Emptor folks.
