Terrorism. SARS. Airline bankruptcies. War. They're
not making it easy to travel these days. Unfortunately,
neither are many travel agents, both the human kind
and the online kind. Complaints against agents, such
as unexplained charges and crummy customer service,
rose 23% last year, according to the Council of Better
Business Bureaus. What's driving the surge? Consumer
frustration with online agencies, for one thing. The
Department of Transportation received 317 complaints
against travel agents last year, with nearly two-thirds
involving the six major online agencies.
Americans will spend $43 billion booking travel via
the Internet this year and increase that amount to
$58 billion by 2005, according to market research
firm Jupiter Research. But as Jessica Robles and Adam
Worch discovered, you don't always get what you pay
for. Last October the New York City couple booked
a Christmas holiday flight to Lima, Peru, on Aero
Continente airline for about $1,000 through online
travel giant Travelocity. But on Nov. 28, Travelocity
informed them that the flight was canceled. Thing
is, Robles and Worch later learned that Aero Continente
had cancelled the flight four weeks earlier. "Did
it take us a long time to contact the customer? Yeah,
I guess it did," says Travelocity consumer-relations
manager Christine Bullock. Not only did the agency
fail to accommodate their request for a new flight,
but it said a refund would take three to four months.
Bullock contends that the couple had "ample time
to rebook" on another airline and that the delay
in getting a refund is due to the repayment schedule
of airlines and other suppliers, not Travelocity.
Still, Robles says, "Travelocity treated us so
badly. The whole experience has made me afraid to
plan a trip on the Internet."
Coke versus Pepsi. McDonald's versus Burger King.
Bitter rivalries. Here's one more. Traditional travel
agents versus online agents. Which one will get you
a better fare? In some cases neither. We called three
travel agents to get an airfare from New York to London.
Then we checked fares on Travelocity, Expedia and
Cheap Tickets. The Web sites each offered a $616 fare
on Virgin Atlantic, while the travel agents ranged
from $620 to $661. But the real winner? Virgin Atlantic's
Web site, which quoted us a price of $591.
You'd figure well-trained professional travel agents
would know how to find the lowest fares available
at the press of a button. Not necessarily. A 2001
survey by "Consumer Reports Travel Letter"
revealed that only 51% of travel agents disclosed
all low-fare flights when asked, and the difference
between the actual lowest fare and the lowest fare
agents quoted was sometimes as much as $190. One reason:
The travel agent reservation system, known as Global
Distribution Systems (GDS), does not provide all available
Web fares. And as Ed Perkins, a syndicated travel
columnist, puts it, "If an agent insists on doing
everything through the GDS and is not willing to explore
the many other options available, he is behind the
times."
Travel agents, like most salespeople, have a long
history of making money on commission. At one time
they received as much as 10% from airlines for each
fare they booked. But the airlines have been cutting
back on commissions since 1995, finally eliminating
them last year. How are agents making up for the loss?
Hiking service fees. Today 88% of agents - up from
20% in 1995 - charge fees for everything from issuing
tickets ($15 to $50) to planning overseas vacations
(as much as $250).
Sure, agents have to make a living. The problem:
Such fees and other expenses, including taxes, aren't
always disclosed until after you've booked travel
plans. For instance, about 30% of travel sites recently
surveyed by the International Consumer Protection
and Enforcement Network engaged in dubious practices,
such as promoting "total prices" that did
not include airport costs or taxes. There are also
the traditional agents who charge fees while still
collecting commissions from tour operators and cruise
lines. "The customer should never get any surprises,"
says Bud Gillison, national secretary of the American
Society of Travel Agents (ASTA).
To be one of 20,000-plus members of ASTA, you need
to live by its ethics code. Consider item nine: "[Do]
not allow any preferred relationship with a supplier
to interfere with the interests of...clients."
Sounds good on paper. The reality? "Many agents
act more as salespeople for the supplier rather than
as a counsellor for you," says Scott Ahlsmith
of the Institute of Certified Travel Agents, the industry's
leading education body. For instance, they may steer
you toward a particular supplier simply because it
pays out higher commissions or gives incentives.
Steve Danishek, owner of TMA Travel in Seattle, says
agents will "usually try to offer what [they]
get their highest commission on or a deal that has
a contest." For instance, in June a tour company
ran a promotion offering agents a free Hawaiian Airline
ticket for every 10 tickets they sold on the airline.
"Of the three airlines flying out of Seattle
to Hawaii, guess which one I will sell first?"
Danishek asks. The answer: Hawaiian, as long as the
other airlines aren't more expensive. Considering
that scenario, find out who an agent's preferred suppliers
are before booking a trip, then request a price break
based on the incentives an agent can expect to earn.
Online travel technology is a wonderful thing...when
it works. Henry Harteveldt, a Forrester Research analyst,
reports that online agencies are so error-prone that
one out of every 10 hotel reservations gets fouled
up. And Bill McGee, travel consultant to Consumer
WebWatch, says that such frequent system glitches
make it hard to tell if sites have technical problems
or are just luring travellers with attractive fares
that later get voided due to tech snafus - a "bait
and switch" tactic, as McGee puts it.
When David Shimberg of Charlotte, N.C., used Virginia-based
Travelution.com to book a business trip to Orlando
last March, he got an attractive fare of $397. A day
and a half after purchasing the ticket, Travelution
notified him that the fare was a mistake caused by
a system error. The real fare: $663. "Had [Travelution]
told me beforehand that there was some problem with
the system, I would have gone with another service,"
Shimberg says. He later logged complaints with the
Better Business Bureau in Virginia Beach, Va., the
Federal Trade Commission, and the North Carolina attorney
general's office. Only when that office agreed to
look into his case, Shimberg claims, did Travelution
agree to refund the $266 difference in ticket price.
Travelution did not return repeated calls for comment.
You go to a travel agent for help, not heartache,
right? Well, consider the New York City woman who
booked a vacation to Brazil via an online agency.
The agency told her all she needed was a valid U.S.
passport. But at check-in, she was turned away for
not having a visa. Then there's the Albany, N.Y.,
traveller who last year asked her agent to arrange
a "partially escorted" tour of London. Once
abroad, she got theatre vouchers, bus tickets and
a subway pass - but no guide. "Often, agents
run into trouble because they sell something they
know nothing about," says Massachusetts travel
lawyer Rodney Gould.
When using an agent, test his knowledge of a locale.
Find out, for example, how often he's been to the
country you're interested in. Then get customer referrals
to check out the agent's work. And if you feel an
agent has wronged you, file a suit in small-claims
court and register a complaint with ASTA. If the agent
is a member, "they could be thrown out of ASTA
if they don't resolve the problem," says the
association's national vice president, Kathryn Sudeikis.
What does it take to get some TLC from a travel Web
site? In some cases, quite a bit. Last year Phil Saucier
ended up sending six e-mail messages to Travelocity's
customer-service department, then two formal letters
and finally a letter to the company's CEO after a
flight he had booked turned out to be nonexistent.
Travelocity compensated Saucier for the hotel bill
he incurred because of the mix-up and offered a $200
travel voucher. Bullock, Travelocity's consumer-relations
manager, admits, "We are guilty of not sending
[Saucier] an e-mail notifying him when the flight
was cancelled." Saucier contends that's not all
the agency was guilty of. "They keep you on hold
for hours. I heard enough Muzak to last me a year,"
he says.
Saucier is hardly alone in waiting for help. A December
2002 study by Jupiter Research found that 41% of customer-service
inquiries to travel Web sites took two days or longer
to resolve. That's unacceptable, especially in an
age of last-minute travel bookings, says Jupiter's
travel analyst Jared Blank. He advises that consumers
follow the site's complaint procedure, use the phone
in addition to e-mail to tackle customer-service complaints,
and keep a log of correspondences, conversations and
people spoken to.
Nearly a third of traditional travel agencies have
shut down in the past nine years, and more are likely
to follow. The percentage of consumers using these
agencies declined from 32% in 1999 to 26% in 2002.
Shaky finances at a firm could spell trouble for its
customers. Consider the case of travel agent Myron
Aberman, charged last June in Worcester, Mass., Superior
Court with stealing $80,000 of customers' money. Aberman
started taking one client's money to pay the supplier
for another client, hoping that more money would come
in to cover the funds. "His business was failing
and he started robbing Peter to pay Paul, but it caught
up with him," says his lawyer, John Dombrowski.
Aberman is currently on probation and following a
court-ordered payback schedule to former customers.
Travel insurance won't cover a bankrupt agency, and
only California offers consumers repayment through
the state travel consumer restitution fund if a California
agency goes belly up. However, in order to collect
you must have been in the state when making the reservation.
If your agent goes bankrupt and is still holding your
travel payment, you'll have to wait in line with other
creditors, and there may be nothing to collect. "Most
travel agencies don't have a lot of assets that are
going to be available to satisfy a judgment,"
says travel lawyer Alexander Anolik.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to determine the financial
condition of a firm; most agencies are privately owned.
The best way to protect yourself is to avoid payments
by cash or check. "It's always wise to buy on
a credit card so that if something goes wrong, you
can get it back through the card company," says
ASTA's Gillison. And yet even paying for a vacation
with a credit card is no guarantee that a travel agent
won't fleece you, as John Carnaghie knows. He bought
a $3,000 cruise vacation from a California travel
agency last July, only to learn later that the agency
never forwarded his payment to the cruise line. "I
had a minor case of hysterics," says Carnaghie,
who eventually recovered the original cost of the
cruise from his credit card company, but still had
to pay another $400 to rebook the cruise.
Americans lose more than $12 billion a year in travel
fraud. Bogus travel solicitations now make the list
of the FTC's "Dirty Dozen" online scams.
"Be wary of salespeople pressuring you to buy
on the spot or those 'great' deals. Few businesses
can afford to give away services of real value or
substantially undercut another company's price,"
says Sheila Adkins of the Council of Better Business
Bureaus.
In the year after Sept. 11, 2001, the number of travellers
buying travel insurance tripled. Thing is, insurance
isn't cheap - usually between 6 to 10% of the total
cost of the trip - so make sure you're getting what
you need. Travel agents sell insurance, but they're
not insurance experts; discuss policy queries directly
with the insurer. And if you buy insurance through
the agent, get the insurance documents. Carnaghie
shelled out $150 for insurance, but the agent never
gave him an actual policy.
Remember that travel agents receive commissions on
insurance sales and may push you toward products that
benefit them more than you. For example, don't get
sucked into buying the insurance that comes with your
cruise or tour, because these companies often won't
pay out until you've exhausted your other insurance,
such as homeowner's. Also, supplier-packaged insurance
won't protect you if the cruise or tour company goes
broke. You're better off purchasing directly from
a major insurer, advises Pat Funk of the Association
of Retail Travel Agents.
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