Price quoted on Vayama at booking was increased after ticket confirmation
- By
- Aparna Patel
- |
- 22 Jul, 2023
- |
I am happy to report that Emirates has provided us (Vayama) with authorization to honor ALL bookings that were impacted by this situation at the original fare quoted. We are currently in the process of contacting all impacted customers by phone or email to advise them.
If any of you on this OP were impacted, please give Vayama Customer Support a call at 1.650.265.1856 at your earliest convenience to confirm you would still like your booking.
I’m very happy that Emirates made this decision as it was the right thing to do!
Sincerely,
David R
Director Customer Relations
Vayama
When I understand correctly, what happened was the following: You ordered simultaneously via different agents multiple seats on the same aircraft. For sake of example, let’s say you ordered 5. But there were only four seats of that fare class available. And vayama was the laziest of your agents, and now you blame vayama for not getting you a cheap seat. But if they had been faster, one of your other agents would have had to send you the “sorry, the fare has increased” email…
One major drawback with using third party booking websites (especially for air) is that there is a time lag between when they queried the airline reservation system and when your booking request is submitted. During this time lag, the seat could be sold, the airline could load new fares, etc.
When you search for fares, the airline systems return what is available at the moment your search request was received. They do not hold any of those seats, simply say what is open right now.
If you are booking direct with the airline, the moment you click the book this flight button they put a hold on those seats allowing you time to fill in the form (but even here I have seen the notice that the fare is no longer available).
If you are booking on a third party website, they wait for you to complete the form and submit your payment details AND then they try to put a hold on the seats. And in some cases this can be hours later due to a need for human interaction at some online agencies.
Most every airline has the similar rules about fares not being guaranteed until ticketed … from Delta’s website “Delta/KLM fares are subject to change and are not guaranteed until tickets are issued”. And as OTAs like Vayama are simply working as agents of the airlines, so the price quoted at final confirmation by the airline is the price to be paid.
The internet is littered with posts by people who feel cheated because the price they paid did not match the initial airfare shown by the search engine. But that is the nature of the beast.
The safest bet is to book direct with the airline (but as I mentioned above even that is not 100% fool proof).
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Vayama is part of a big group of interlinked international travel companies, mainly based in the Netherlands
In America they trade as vayama, but from the about us page of there website it is a brand name for Travix international, part of another bigger group. Bcd international
http://www.vayama.com/aboutus?s=307570705
However the usa part of the business (airtrade international)is accredited by the better business beaurau
This is linked at the bottom of the vayama about us page.
My recommendation would be to contact vayama customer services, speak to a manager and attempt to get them to honour the original price, if you have no joy tell them you will make a complaint to the BBB, and then make that complaint. The have an A+ rating, and will want to protect that.
My other recommendation is to be polite but firm, you will get more traction that way.
I notice that vayama are (not quite) blaming the airline, you could contact the airlines customer service to ascertain if the fare that vayama quoted was available at the time (if vayama had been granted a block of seats at a special price it’s possible they oversold – more evidence to take to the bbb)
Good luck
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