Recently, I took a round-trip flight from Vancouver, Canada, to Dublin for just $344 Canadian dollars, or about $250. This flight can typically cost over $1,000 CAD.
The deal was so good that I didn't give it a second thought when I had to book through an online travel agency rather than directly with the airline to get the low price.
A few months later, my husband and I were sipping Guinness and hiking the Cliffs of Moher. But our troubles began when we tried to return home.
We found out our direct flight was canceled at the last minute and our changed itinerary was terrible.
The day before our return flight to Vancouver, I went to register online like I always do. But I couldn't find our flight.
Panicked, I contacted the airline, who informed me that I should contact the travel agency we had booked the flights.
After hours of waiting while paying long distance calling charges, I was able to speak to someone at the agency and learned that our return flight had been canceled.
The agency didn't bother to inform us. Luckily, they offered to book us an alternate route home.
But instead of a direct flight, we were offered a nightmare itinerary with three stops and four flights. Our new route had us flying from Dublin to London, London to New York, New York to Toronto and finally Toronto to Vancouver.
As a nervous pilot, I dreaded the long journey. But having no other options, we headed to the airport for a 6:30am departure from Dublin.
Unfortunately, our long day of travel started even longer: our flight from Dublin to London has been delayed.
Luckily, a London airport officer saved the day.
By the time we arrived in London we had already I missed our connecting flight At New York.
We went to the airline's customer service department to see what they could do because I really didn't want to be on hold for hours to get back in touch with the travel agent.
That’s when our luck changed. An agent at the desk saw our route – and the bloodshot look in my tired eyes – and took pity on us.
She offered to not only rebook our connecting flights, but also completely change our itinerary and put us on a direct flight to Vancouver that evening.
We were so lucky that the customer service angel helped us, but I don't ever want to take our chances again.
Many travel companies may be doing just fine and I'm glad I got my flight approved, but this experience was a nightmare.
In the future, I will avoid middlemen and book directly with an airline this will notify me of canceled flights and will be much easier to contact if they need to be changed.
