We have always bought our airline tickets from the airline we were flying. We don't have any air miles, we just think its safer. We have been wondering it there is any advantage in dealing with someone like Exploretrip, JustFly or eDreams. Can you really save money and, are they dependable (no surprises).
Would like to hear if anyone has had good luck with these types of services and if you have any recommendations.
Thanks
Jerry&Stelly
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If you want to consider third-party sellers, I would personally stick to Expedia and Priceline - they are large and established players and, yes, can save you money for certain itineraries (not all). As always, it just depends on your level of risk aversion and flexibility (always read the small print and any caveats, including connection times). Both Expedia and Priceline worked for me in the past but I always compare them against the airline's own fares first.
Depending on where you live in this new era of lowcost international airlines like Norwegian and Wow there is no advantage to gimmicks like Exploretrip, JustFly or eDreams.
Expedia is the best all the third party I find. I have bought tickets on Expedia also that were cheaper than buying direct on an airline's own site.
You need to take a looks at the TripAdvisor Air Travel forum, where there are many many threads complaining about eDreams and JustFly.
Here is but one example:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g1-i10702-k7832000-Edreams_legit-Air_Travel.html
Now put JustFly in the search box and see what comes up.
I have not heard of Exploretrip but you can search them too.
The most common complaint about eDreams is that they lure you in with a low price, you give them your credit card for pay,ent, and several days later they contact you to say the airline has "cancelled your booking" and you need to rebook at a higher price. (Don't do that). Then you have to wIt to get your money back, and you may have trouble getting all of it.
I would not touch any of these third party agents. Expedia is indeed legitimate, but you can have problems with them too. They may advertise a low flight price, but it turns out there is only one ticket at that fare. If you have two,people, you will either have to be on separate tickets, one at each price, or paynthe higher price to get both on one ticket. This happened to a friend of mine.
Another friend, who,lives in Chamonix, bought tickets for his family of four to fly from Milan to,Seattle and back. They drove to Milan Malpensa for the flight and parked their car there. He did not notice until he checked in for the flight home that it landed at Linate, not Malpensa. The itinerary he got from Expedia simply said "Milan" for both flights. I am sure there were actual,airport codes somewhere, but he never saw those. It was a major hassle for his family to transfer between airports after the long trans-Atlantic flight.
Another example, hotel not flights. We were checking in to a nice hotel in Oregon and the family next to us, who had just checked in themselves, asked where to plug in their Tesla. The hotel did not have a Tesla plug-in. They had booked through Expedia, who told them this hotel,did have such a charger. It turns out the charger was at a different hotel,with a similar name ( both names contained the word "river."). The receptionist kindly allowed them to cancel their booking without penalty and re-book at the other place, but I could tell they were stressed out by the mix-up.
I always check Kayak.com when booking airfare - sometimes I book directly through the airline and sometimes through Expedia or Priceline. I read a lot of travel forums and blogs, and tend to book when I read about good flight deals.
Thanks all for your responses. We will book direct with the airline.
