Absolutely Appalling Service

Absolutely Appalling service

Be warned, once you book a flight through Travelstart, you are stuck with that ticket as you will receive NO after sales service and will not be able to speak to any consultant in person as Travelstart changed their call center here in SA so that it only works with an online email and whatsapp service that takes 72 hours (if you are lucky) to reply after every single request.

In August 2021 we went online and saw travelstart had flights available to the USA as we wanted to visit my son who is studying on that side. We booked flights, paid and started preparing for our journey. When we arrived at the airport for our flights we were told that we would not be able to fly as we needed special permits to visit the USA at that stage and that our normal tourist visas were not enough. We were not in lockdown so it was quite a shock for us all as none of that was mentioned anywhere by Travelstart when we booked our tickets and they happily took our money knowing that we would be unable to travel.

We immediately tried to contact them while at the airport only to find out that the only way to contact them would be through a whatsapp system or email. No direct personal conversation with anyone to sort anything quickly as it takes them 72 hours to respond to anything you ask them.

We ended up phoning United airlines in the USA directly on our way home(as we did not want the tickets to register as a No show seeing that we were at the airport but were not allowed to fly) and they were gracious enough to give us credit for our flights and place it on their system.

Now comes the fun part. In late January 2022 we decided to give it another go and travel to the USA to go visit my son as everything was open now in the USA. We sent email after email and whatsapp after whatsapp to request our flights to be changed to flights in the middle of March(for my daughter) and May(myself and my wife) . After about a week they sent us an email specifying flights to the wrong destinations in the USA as well as that we needed to pay in and extra R9800 per person to change our flights !

We originally paid R14000 per ticket for our original tickets, now they expected us to pay an additional R9800 per ticket ?

How in the world is it possible to almost have to pay double now suddenly for a ticket ? It seemed like a bit of **************** and it’s almost as if you are dealing with a syndicate here when doing business with these people. You already purchased and paid in full for a ticket and now(to make any changes) they just wanted to make as much extra money out of you as they can.

I requested(by email as well as their whatsapp app) that they look at the correct flights we asked for and send us the prices. We even flew down to their cape town offices to try and get it sorted only to be told that they have moved to a new location. When requesting their new address the lady at reception just told us that they moved a week ago and that she does not have their new address yet but that she will let an operator phone us. Really ? You can arrange that someone phones us but you cannot give us an address where they “moved” to ? Sounds a bit fishy to me, but anyways lets leave it at that.

After about 6 weeks of struggling I phoned United airlines directly to change my daughters flight as time was running out for her to travel and ended up being charged a re-issue fee as my original agent(travelstart) did not do their work.

I still need to sort out my own tickets before travelling in May but it seems like we will end up calling United airlines in new York again as we are not receiving any assistance from travelstart in SA.

Save yourself a lot of frustration and disappointment by rather booking with another travel operator as you will have serious issues to get any changes made to any of your flights if something comes up overseas. Travelstart does not have a direct contact line or call center that can assist you directly anymore and you will be left angry, frustrated and disappointed by not getting assisted in your time of need.

I will NEVER EVER again use this company to book anything for me again as I feel ****** and disappointed. They destroy peoples dreams and holidays by doing what they are doing and I hope this experience I shared here saves someone from going through all this **** and effort that we needed to go through to go visit our son overseas.

Very unsatisfied South African customer