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Air New Zealand and travel agents

Hi All,
Has anyone had experience booking flights to NZ on Air New Zealand from the US? After hours of attempting to book directly (website buggy and no phone support) I gave up and agreed to allow the Australian travel agent to handle the bookings (we hired her to plan the itinerary).

Nightmare- she made an error on her recommended itinerary resulting in an incorrect date for US return date. Nightmare-refused to acknowledge the error, fix it (before seats became unavailable), and ghosted us for 2 days.

BUYER BEWARE: if an agent books your flight on AirNZ you cannot manage your own paid booking (changes, seats, etc). Checking with a friend, a travel agent for decades with clients all over the world, called it “crazy”-in his experience never heard of not customers being blocked to manage their flight bookings online.

So if you experience any unforeseen emergencies (or airline related cancellations, delays etc) you have to find your travel agent to fix it - and if you happen to get stuck with a “rogue” agent (or the agent is sick, absent or deceased) AirNZ can do zero to help you.

Post-Morten: after days of begging and pleading she corrected the error and changed the flights. But AirNZ online still isn’t showing the booking on their website when I sign in.

JP

Posted by
33811 posts

sorry you're having this trouble - between a non-responsive website and a flaky paid helper it sounds awful

Posted by
2732 posts

Our TA recommended I book Air New Zealand ourselves as she felt it would be easier to review all options. The Air New Zealand website was far and away the most user friendly and easy to use of any airlines I have used. We were able to book a 2023 trip, premium economy going to Auckland returning from Sydney with a few clicks and even enter a bid for business class upgrade. Sorry you had these problems. My (non-techy) experience is when booking websites misbehave it’s usually cured by either re-booting my device, clearing cookies or switching to a laptop. I used my iPad with Air New Zealand. Sounds like you need a new TA. That level of support is unacceptable.

Posted by
6788 posts

For future reference, Air New Zealand is a partner with United Airlines. Most Air New Zealand flights to/from the USA are United code-shares (that is, they have both an Air New Zealand and a United flight number), and can be booked via either airline's website, usually for the same price. If Air New Zealand's website is flaking out, it may be worth giving united.com a try.