Does a travel agent have to inform you of any fees they charge before taking your money?

isntthisfun

I recently booked a flight through an online travel agency. flightsguru.com  Turns out they charged me more than £1100 on top of the cost of flight without telling me.  I only found out when trying to change my flight directly with the airline, which I had to do as flightsguru wouldn't return my calls or emails regarding changing my flight. Company obviously refusing to reimburse. Are they allowed to do this?! I suspect not without saying so. If not, how/where do I complain etc as I'm sure I'm not the only one they are scamming.

bagand96

They do have to inform you of any admin fees and charges when you enter into a contract, most cover this when you tick the box to say you agree to the Terms and Conditions (with a link to said T&Cs).

However £1100 seems like way more than a fee of any kind.  Is this charge as part of changing the flight?  If so then this might be quite normal, most of the cheapest airfares are not changeable, or may be changeable for an admin fee plus a re-costing of the air fare, perhaps this is what's happened here?

What exactly was the £1100 for?  Changing the flight? I'm surprised the airline would deal with you directly, normally they're unable when it's an agent booking. More information would be helpful on the exact chain of events and where the charge came in.

DullGreyGuy

isntthisfun said:

I recently booked a flight through an online travel agency. flightsguru.com  Turns out they charged me more than £1100 on top of the cost of flight without telling me.  I only found out when trying to change my flight directly with the airline, which I had to do as flightsguru wouldn't return my calls or emails regarding changing my flight. Company obviously refusing to reimburse. Are they allowed to do this?! I suspect not without saying so. If not, how/where do I complain etc as I'm sure I'm not the only one they are scamming.

So they quoted, say £2,000 for the flight, you thought that was a good price and so bought it. Having now shopped around you've found the flight was available for £900?

A company is free to charge what they want for a product as long as they give you the total price up front. In most industries there is no need for them to reveal their markup/commission etc. It's up to you to shop around before buying to decide which price you like. 

I'd be surprised that an agent is putting that much markup on because flight sales are fairly cut throat and with various price comparison tools available they'd get very little business. I may be more suspicious of the one saying the price is much lower. 

When comparing prices you need to make sure you look at like for like. Whilst consumers talk of economy, prem economy, business etc in actual fact those are subdivided into 3+ ticket classes and the bottom and top tickets can have vastly different pricing. 

Grumpy_chap

isntthisfun said:

I recently booked a flight through an online travel agency. flightsguru.com  Turns out they charged me more than £1100 on top of the cost of flight without telling me.  I only found out when trying to change my flight directly with the airline, which I had to do as flightsguru wouldn't return my calls or emails regarding changing my flight. Company obviously refusing to reimburse. Are they allowed to do this?! I suspect not without saying so. If not, how/where do I complain etc as I'm sure I'm not the only one they are scamming.

It is unclear what happened here - when and how did the £1,100 fee arise?

If you are saying you shopped around for a flight and the most competitive cost was, say £3k so you went ahead and booked.  That £3k cost included the £1,100 fees for the agent.  In this scenario, it is a private business arrangement between the airline and the agent how the total you paid is split between the two parties.

OR, are you saying, you shopped around, the most competitive cost was £3k but the £1,100 was added on top so you paid £4,100 in total?

Either way, I doubt the airline will deal with you directly for a ticket sold via an agent.
Were the flights "bucket" seats, so non-changeable, non-refundable?

isntthisfun

So to be clear the agent never mentioned any fee.  I was told this was the best deal I could get on the flights. However, now I want to change the flight they have not responded to calls or emails so I ended up having to go to the airline directly.  When I log on to the airline it shows the price paid for the ticket was £1100+ cheaper than what I paid to the agent.  So the agent added fees without telling me, they deliberately misled me telling me they were getting me 'the best deal' - I did it over the phone not online. 
It is a changeable flight scheduled flight.

DullGreyGuy

isntthisfun said:

So to be clear the agent never mentioned any fee.  I was told this was the best deal I could get on the flights. However, now I want to change the flight they have not responded to calls or emails so I ended up having to go to the airline directly.  When I log on to the airline it shows the price paid for the ticket was £1100+ cheaper than what I paid to the agent.  So the agent added fees without telling me, they deliberately misled me telling me they were getting me 'the best deal' - I did it over the phone not online. 
It is a changeable flight scheduled flight.

And presumably you'd already shopped around to know what the going price on the flight was?

Different companies have different ways of displaying the same thing... with BA you will always see the price you paid and never know what commission the agent got. Maybe with this airline they show the wholesale price and thus expose the commission... still doesn't mean that it wasn't the best deal the agent could do not that there were better deals out there. 

Clearly any salesman is going to say their price is great but the only way you know that is by shopping around... even the salesman cannot ever honestly know if someone else is willing to undercut them or not. 

isntthisfun

Ok so the whole story is a bit longer and more boring and exposes me as a total sucker.
I had indeed shopped around but was finding that flights were getting sold out as I was booking them so I was running a bit scared.
I then called this agent and they found me flights that I wanted which included premium economy for one leg (v tall passenger who gets DBT with us!). I paid for the flights and was told I would get an email with details. Next morning I get a call to say actually those flights were gone when they called the airline back and then proceeded to find others despite me feeling something wasn't quite right and saying that I'd prefer a refund instead. I allowed myself to be talked into taking these other flights which do not include one leg in premium but were somehow miraculously an identical price to the ones from the day before. I clearly wasn't thinking straight.  
Ok so far not that bad, I should have demanded a refund and walked away but I didn't.
About 3 weeks later I get a call saying that the airline has now put up the taxes and we need to pay an extra £39 pre passenger.  I refused and said I'd never in my life been charged more once the flight was booked and they could either have it as is or give me a refund.  Agent gave me a whole 'I'm on your side I'll see what I can do' chat and then funnily enough I didn't hear back.
So now I need to change the return date of my changable tickets but when I call they say the agent who booked them is busy and will call me back. He hasn't in over a week despite my ringing and emailing. I have also said I am happy to change with another agent but they won't. So now I have a flight that is changable but can't change as they are avoiding me.  Hence how I ended up on air france and saw what was paid for the flight.  All in all it would seem to me there is some very underhand practice going on here - yes I got sucked in but does that make it ok for them to do this?

eskbanker

There's nothing preventing such companies from charging higher prices than you'd pay direct, although the price you believe was paid to the airline may perhaps be exclusive of taxes anyway?

However, if there's any questionable or underhand conduct involving them moving the goalposts after purchasing and/or seeking additional fees without adequate justification, then it may be worth complaining to them, which seems to need to be done in writing.

In itself this is unlikely to bear fruit, but fulfils your requirement to do so before escalating to ABTA, of which (unusually for this sort of operation) they're a member.

Make sure you're clear about what outcome you're after....

Grumpy_chap

isntthisfun said:

When I log on to the airline it shows the price paid for the ticket was £1100+ cheaper than what I paid to the agent.  So the agent added fees without telling me, they deliberately misled me telling me they were getting me 'the best deal' 

You purchased through an agent so must have expected that the agent would make money on the cost of the flights.
It is, in some ways, irrelevant whether the agents "cut" is £11 or £1,100.
Just because the airline system shows the sales value to the agent at £1,100 lower than the sales value you paid the agent does not necessarily mean that you could have purchased those flights at £1,100 cheaper via any other retail source.  Even if the airline had a direct sales portal, the retail price might well be the same to the end customer and show an internal (group) transaction from "airline" to "airline retail" at the same lower figure.

It is also possible that the £1,100 lower figure you see at the airline sales figure is not all the agents "cut" as that might be a figure that does not include relevant taxes.

isntthisfun

Yes of course I understand that the agent makes money - no one works for free!  My question really is whether they have to disclose this and would appear from comments that the answer is no.  

eskbanker

isntthisfun said:

Yes of course I understand that the agent makes money - no one works for free!  My question really is whether they have to disclose this and would appear from comments that the answer is no.  

Indeed - off the top of my head I can't think of any businesses with a legal or regulatory obligation to disclose their profit margin on a given customer transaction, but even if there are any, travel agents aren't required to do so....