Hi all.
Has anyone dealt with Skypicker before?
I booked an itinerary (one way to Europe) through them via Kayak. Price quite cheap, but I would not otherwise recommend them.
Details below. The upshot: After a number of confusing flight changes, they are offering us an itinerary analogous to our initial booking, but framing it as a “change” and asking for 1000 EUR+ as a fee.
Our flight times have changed substantially, and I would have preferred to deal directly with the airlines. I booked an evening departure (6:35pm), but this has been pushed 7.5 hours earlier (11 in the morning), and our once-reasonable itinerary now includes two 6-hour layovers. This was done incrementally (and I suspect purposefully), rather than all at once. A few weeks ago, we received an e-mail noting that our “flight details” for our initial two flights had “changed”—not exactly convenient, since we planned on working that day. Skypicker offered us a flight at nearly the same time, which we accepted. After several confusing subsequent e-mails with contradictory information, we learned that the new flight we accepted had since “sold out” because we did not confirm in time (it was within 24 hours). So, we reluctantly accepted a new flight that departed 4 hours earlier (2:30pm).
Now, the airline appears to be rescheduling that flight to 11:00am - so we must arrive at the airport early in the morning (rather than 3:30 or 4, as we initially planned), and we certainly can’t work. Instead, we spend our valuable time sitting in two different airports for 6 hours+. I realize that flights change. Looking at this board, I see people have encountered far worse. But this is not a small change. When I book a flight leaving at 6:35, I shouldn’t have to plan on leaving that morning. We basically add an unnecessary day of travel to arrive in Europe at the exact same time.
And here’s the worse part: There is still a flight departing at 6:35 from the same airline (it actually looks like the very flight we initially booked), and it isn’t sold out. Since I can’t deal with the airline directly, I demanded that Skypicker move us back to our initial departure time.
They are claiming that our new itinerary (leaving @ 11:00) looks “fine” from “their end.” They did offer to change our flight to the 6:35 departure --- for a 1000+ EUR fee. They are essentially “offering” an itinerary comparable to our initial booking for a huge price increase.
The cynical side of me believes that they only changed our initial flight because they found someone else who would pay more money.