*********** staff

Travelstart wanted to charge my wife R980 to change the name on her ticket for a flight. This they passed as being a reasonable price for a return ticket that cost R2500. (admin fees) This information took 2 days to get from them.

I phoned them and explained that their website is unclear about when you must use your ID and when you must use Passport information. They eventually told me I only have to pay the airline’s fee of R330 to do the name change. (So their cut of the name change fee is R550?)

Paid the fee immediately over the phone and received the new ticket information about 30min later.

On the day of the flight my wife checks in with no issue but they cannot find my ticket on the system and I was told to contact Travelstart to have my ticket re-issued in order to make the flight. Luckily we were at the airport 20min before check-in started.

Using Travelstarts' emergency e-mail and contact info I get a hold of them after a while only to be told that there is nothing wrong with my ticket and I should be able to check in. In fact the young lady who spoke to me found it amusing/funny that the airline had a problem with the ticket. I was not amused.

I go to the airline help desk and have Travelstart speak to them directly. Turns out that with the name change of my wife’s ticket they cancelled both and only re-issued her ticket. My ticket was never re-issued. The airline staff had to almost beg Travelstart to re-issue my ticket. I made the flight just in time because of a delay with the plane. If the flight was on schedule I would have missed the flight.