Reliable online agents for long haul flights?

Voyager2002

kuepper said:

On-the-coast said:

I’ve flown to a lot of obscure airports on that side of the world.  Agree with comments above. Do your research using something like google flights - learn how to use the search options - including the stopover durations and airline networks. 

Ideally stick with a single airline (or at least one of the big three networks) - so that both flights are ticketed together. 

I usually book with airline - I think google flights gives you that option. 

And, unless you want to build in a day touristing somewhere like Hong Kong, strongly agree with taking a short hop to e.g. Amsterdam & flying the long leg from there. 

There's no long hop from AMS it seems, you have a stop in Istanbul and it adds about £500 on the price compared to Hainan/MIAT which should work but I get an error message when I try and book the trip on Hainan website so confidence wanes. Looking like for peace of mind I'll have to go with Turkish that's an extra £500 with long layovers that'll probably mean a hotel too

If it is any consolation, if you do the whole journey on Turkish Airlines and there is a long stopover then they will provide the hotel in Istanbul. Have a good look at their website for details.

Alternatively, do the Hainan / MIAT combination but give yourself a day in Beijing as insurance against flight delays and schedule changes.

ThorOdinson

They are all scams. Find the cheapest and book direct with the airline. It might cost a little more bit it's worth it.

kuepper

I ended up booking direct with Turkish just to get peace of mind.

Voyager2002

kuepper said:

I ended up booking direct with Turkish just to get peace of mind.

Be sure to explore their website... the tours they offer to transit passengers look really good, including meals and museum admission that otherwise would be really expensive. The free hotel stay would be worth having but there are so many restrictions that you need to check carefully whether you would qualify.

jimi_man

ThorOdinson said:

They are all scams. Find the cheapest and book direct with the airline. It might cost a little more bit it's worth it.

Let’s just clear this up as this is complete and utter rubbish. A scam is a fraudulent activity and in no way are the majority of OTAs scams. There are advantages in booking direct with the airline - especially when it comes to IRROPS and other customer service stuff and I never book other than this. But that often comes at a price. If all one is bothered about is price then OTAs can often be the best. That doesn’t mean they are all scams by any means. Because they offer the ticket on price alone they can’t afford to provide the CS frills that might go with that if purchased from an airline - especially if a return ticket is purchased on two different PNRs for example. 

There are clearly some ticket sellers that are fraudulent but that’s not to say that all of them are, or even a high percentage. 

What is a problem is the amount of fraud that is perpetuated on OTAs - as with any business using an online payment system. 

It does sometimes seem on this forum that every time someone doesn’t get something that is absolutely perfect (or more likely they don’t read the T’s and Cs correctly) then it immediately becomes a scam, when in all likelihood the chances are that most people don’t actually know what a scam is. 

To the OP. Turkish are a reasonable airline and you’ll be fine. 

ThorOdinson

The scam is that they present themselves as saving you money for a fight, without making it clear that you lose most of your rights and protections by booking with them. 

You either get lucky and everything goes without a hitch, the middle man doesn't go bust etc, or you get a nasty shock because, like everyone else, you didn't read the 20 pages of fine print.

bagand96

ThorOdinson said:

The scam is that they present themselves as saving you money for a fight, without making it clear that you lose most of your rights and protections by booking with them. 

You either get lucky and everything goes without a hitch, the middle man doesn't go bust etc, or you get a nasty shock because, like everyone else, you didn't read the 20 pages of fine print.

What rights and protections do you lose by booking with an agent?

It can make things more complicated, because once booking with an agent you cannot deal directly with the airline, you have to back through the agent in the event of any changes. Not sure that's a right or protection though. 

You lose the option to use Section 75 against the airline because the consumer-supplier link is broken. That's a protection I guess.

None of that makes agents a scam though. 

SW17

The term "scam" is thrown around very easily nowadays (rather like "hack"), but there is sometimes unscrupulous behaviour by some agents (by no means the majority) which creates a very negative image. 

Outside of genuine fraud (eg selling non-existent tickets or reselling airline points), the two main questionable areas for me are:

1. Bait and Switch - Not being able to fulfil the prices/schedule they advertise, and coming back to you with a higher price. This can be due to relatively innocent things like poor technology meaning their availability isn't up to date, up to doing it knowingly to bait in users. It's not always easy for a consumer to know which is which.

2. Selling "connecting" flights on separate tickets, losing the protection of a single ticket, and not making it very obvious to the user what they are buying, especially if they are inexperienced. The likes of Kiwi.com were doing a lot of this, don't know if they still do. One can say Caveat Emptor, but people can easily be confused by this stuff.

The above behaviours are poor customer service at best, pretty unscrupulous at worst and in modern usage, it's not surprising to see the word scam attached sometimes.

That said, the great majority of agents don't do these things. Online, someone like Expedia or Netflights shouldn't be a concern for these behaviours (though post-booking customer service could be patchy). For offline travel agents, companies like Trailfinders, Flight Centre and Dialaflight are generally quite professional if you need to book flights via an agent. It's key to find agents that are accustomed to selling flights rather than package holidays, especially if the itinerary is complex.

ThorOdinson

I had to claim back from Dream World Travel via chargeback, because they wouldn't refund. Fortunately they then went bust so there was no challenge. 

Always book direct, it's worth paying a few quid more!

Voyager2002

SW17 said:

The term "scam" is thrown around very easily nowadays (rather like "hack"), but there is sometimes unscrupulous behaviour by some agents (by no means the majority) which creates a very negative image. 

Outside of genuine fraud (eg selling non-existent tickets or reselling airline points), the two main questionable areas for me are:

1. Bait and Switch - Not being able to fulfil the prices/schedule they advertise, and coming back to you with a higher price. This can be due to relatively innocent things like poor technology meaning their availability isn't up to date, up to doing it knowingly to bait in users. It's not always easy for a consumer to know which is which.

2. Selling "connecting" flights on separate tickets, losing the protection of a single ticket, and not making it very obvious to the user what they are buying, especially if they are inexperienced. The likes of Kiwi.com were doing a lot of this, don't know if they still do. One can say Caveat Emptor, but people can easily be confused by this stuff.

The main selling point of Kiwi is that they pioneered "connecting" flights on separate tickets and developed clever software to find these 'hacks'. Such tickets are obviously vulnerable to cancellations, schedule changes and delays to the earlier of a series of flights. Initially, Kiwi offered their own guarantee and so gave some protection to passengers against these mishaps, but now the "Kiwi guarantee" is an optional extra with a hefty price tag.