I will never buy a plane ticket on booking.com again, and neither should you
Yes, I know I contradicted one of my basic rules, I booked a plane ticket on an OTA, but at [...]
Yes, I know I contradicted one of my basic rules, I booked an airline ticket on an OTA, but in my defense, it was not the travelpagandomenon of Gigi the Paris fraudster, but Booking.com.
In this article:
I have written in many, many articles why I buy airline tickets, always and only, from the company's website or through the American Express travel portal, But this time I had weighed the risk and trusted the most well-known online travel agency.
The facts
The best bonuses
I bought a Ticket to fly from Rome to Shanghai via Canton round trip in business class. I didn't choose booking because of the price, but because of the combinations it gave me that I couldn't reproduce on Amex Travel, while on China Southern's site I didn't even try because I didn't want to get messed up in half-translations.
My itinerary was to leave on April 5 and return on the 10th, only. to be able to fly on both the 787/9 and theA350/900 I had to go through a non-Italian stopover since CZ only flies Dreamliners in Italy.
Everything went smoothly until March 16, I received an email from Gotogate. alerting me to a change in the reservation.
At first I didn't notice anything unusual, and I thought it was some kind of time adjustment as it often happens, but then when I got home I saw that it changed and not by much.
I bought on Booking, but I had to dialogue with Gotogate, because this is the portal that handles tickets on behalf of the former.
The new itinerary changed only one of the 5 flights, the first. The departure was being moved up by 24 hr, due to flight cancellation, while everything else remained unchanged. So no one in booking bothered to validate the company's unilateral change with me, as the Amex team or any travel agent would have done. A modification that forced me to spend (at my own expense) 24h in Guangzhou.
The day after the email I try to get in touch with booking and here the adventure begins.
Non-existent booking.com customer service
I then try to contact the OTA, from the phone number on the email and the first problem arises, to identify myself I have only one key and that is the code of my booking: "which however turns out to be nonexistent." There are no other phone numbers, or other buttons to click to get in touch with booking.com, and the number I have typed at least 10 times is correct.
I am not an inexperienced traveler, I fully understand that these things can happen, but I expect the agency to not just send me an email to tell me accept or cancel, but to help me solve the problem.
Contacting booking by phone is impossible, various form strategies and paths between support pages always lead me to the same result. Call the number and ask for assistance. Too bad then my code is not recognized.
The strategy of these portals is simple: I handle 1M bookings, 1000 will have problems and never come back to me, it's okay I still win.
All this while in my booking profile the reservation was still showing as perfectly active, and with the original combination and not the changed date. I can then find an English phone number., I call and here despite the fact that my ID is not recognized the possibility of talking to an operator is triggered.
I am answered by an operator from India or Pakistan, the accent was that. Being a UK number, they don't tell me where they answer from, as they do in the EU for the GDPR issue.
Here I put myself in the shoes of a traveler who does not speak English well, understanding and being understood is not easy, let alone on the phone with an Indian.
After about 30 minutes dialing we part with a series of my counterproposals to the company so that I can save my itinerary in a way that is convenient for me. On the 18th of March, I receive an email from Gotogate confirming that I have been taken in. And the request to the carrier.
I've had situations like this happen to me before, but With Amex trips were resolved in less than 6 hours, here after almost a week nothing had happened yet.
At the beginning of the following week I call the UK number again, talk to a new attendant who tells me "we are waiting for response from the company"
How I solved my problem WITHOUT booking assistance
We are now less than a week away from my departure and I still have no answers from Booking/Gotogate. Fortunately, this is my job, and over the years I have been able to make contacts at airports. Through these contacts I was able to talk to a CZ representative in Fiumicino who helped me resolve my issue.
Of course he began, "I don't know if I can help you because you booked with booking and they have to be the ones to edit." Having explained the situation and verified that the change was because of the company, in less than 12 hours I was resolved and issued the new ticket.
Note that the afternoon after CZ issued the new billet, Gotogate called me back to tell me that there had been a change to the intinerary and I explained to the assistnte (also Indian) that I had solved my problem without their help and to do nothing on that note.
Again, one realizes how one cannot rely on an OTA. I bought on the Italian site, I don't have to be called by a person who does NOT speak Italian to tell me something so important And that I might misunderstand or still not even answer a foreign number.
In conclusion
Moral of the story? Never book an airline ticket with booking or other OTAs, I am still waiting for a refund for a cancelled reservation on an OTA site from December 2022, I read about hundreds of crazy stories and that's why you can't compare a hotel room (which of course I don't book on booking unless there are crazy bonuses) To an airline ticket.
In this case, it is best to always bet on the company or a travel agent (online or physical) there are those who will definitely take charge of the issues and you will not be left at the mercy of the Indian assistant who can only say, "I have scaled the problem, we will let you know."