Vayama booiking

I booked roundtrip from Atlanta to Moscow, and it worked out fine. Of course I spelled everybody's name exactly like it was on the passport and didn't attempt to make changes or deviations after booking.

Why do this versus booking directly with the airline? I have no personal experience with this online travel agency but have had problems with another one. The conventional wisdom is that if things go sideways you’d be better off dealing directly with the airline.

Be careful with connecting flights if they are not on same airline. I once bought a ticket on third party site and could not check luggage all the way through. I ended up missing my flight to London. Fortunately I was out on another one a few hours later but it could have ended badly. I had enough time between flights in London that I was able to make my connection to Amsterdam.

I only buy from airlines directly now.

I always book with the airline. If you run into irregular operations or other trouble with flights, the airlines will work directly with you if you bought your ticket from them. If you bought the ticket from a third-party, that third party is now your travel agent, and the airlines will often tell you that you need to talk to your travel agent. (My understanding is that the airlines should work with you directly through irregular ops even with a third-party ticket, but I think agents often see "Call your travel agent" as a quick and easy way to decrease the phone/physical queue by 1 with minimal effort).

Thread on Vayama from earlier in the year: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/vayama-website

A few more places for you to look at reviews:

Flyer Talk is a website for frequent flyers. It has a forum. Here's a thread on Vayama that gives a fairly balanced view from the eyes of frequent flyers: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/online-travel-booking-bidding-agencies/1768632-vayama-worth-risk-3.html

Trustpilot has mix of positive and negative reviews: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.vayama.com

Sitejabber appears to be the website where people come to complain. Reviews there are terrible; 270 of 292 are one-star reviews (by comparison, Delta has a total of 51 reviews there). Lots of histrionics and misunderstanding of how ticket purchasing works, but customer service appears to be pretty terrible if needed. https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/vayama.com

I suspect Vayama might be better than some 3rd party sites, but I still refuse to book any way other than directly through the airline. With even the better 3rd party sites, I assume that they're great when nothing goes wrong, and not so great when something does go wrong. And the "not so great" can be disastrous at times.

The main reason to book with a place like Vayama is because they piece mill flights together into a complete trip at a very low price. Yes, I agree booking directly is probably safer - but when the airlines don't offer these pieces as 1 single trip and Vayama does then that's the reason.

Tom, usually a call to customer service with the flights you are looking at will cure that problem.

So admonishments about how “I always book via the airlines” don’t
apply when the airline websites don’t offer the desired ticket but
third parties do.

No. Really. I always book through the airlines. I have never booked through a 3rd party site. And am even more committed to this after watching a friend's trip to Europe end up being cancelled because one of the major "reputable" third party site's customer service was unreachable to fix his problem on the day of departure that could have easily been fixed by United if he had purchased his ticket directly through United.

Doesn’t that usually involve a fee? Or is the fee waived if the ticket is not sold online.

Yes it can. I did it through United and it was $25. That was less than the fee I would have paid through a 3rd party. If you purchase through a 3rd party you often don’t see those fees until you are about to submit your online payment.

Here's where we ran into issues with Vayama. We booked our tickets Omaha-Chicago-Madrid-Lisbon. We originally had two and a half hours in Chicago. Well, the flight schedules changed (as tends to happen when you book far in advance), and that left us with just over an hour in Chicago. I called my airline directly (Iberia), and they told me that it would still be enough time, as I didn't need to change terminals, so we would be fine. Fast forward another month, and the flight schedule changes again, leaving us with 37 minutes in Chicago at O'Hare. So, I called the airline again, and they told me that it definitely was NOT enough time now, but that since I booked through Vayama, I had to deal with them.

I called Vayama customer service (Note: Their customer service is based in Mumbai, India, as confirmed by the agent I spoke to). I explained the situation to her, she repeatedly told me that the itinerary still said it was okay to fly. I repeatedly told her that the airline representative said that it actually was not enough time. I then had to explain that O'Hare Airport is very large, and that it could take more than 37 minutes to get off my plane and try to run to the correct gate to get to my connecting flight. It took about 90 minutes of back-and-forth, and I had done some research before getting on the phone of different flight options, and they ended up allowing us to leave Omaha on an earlier flight. All this to say that working with a third-party when something goes wrong is a huge pain. I have used Vayama before and everything was good with that trip. So, basically, just know what you are getting yourself into before you buy!