Rebooking nightmare

In 2021 we booked flights through Travelstart (before omicron was discovered) and were unable to fly our selected dates because of closed borders. We suspended our tickets and were given until the end of 2022 to fly but because of our schedules and very expensive flight prices we were unable to make use of our flight credits and resigned ourselves to the fact that we had lost our R50000 booking.

A few weeks ago we were pleasantly surprised when Travelstart reached out to us to let us know that Qantas has extended their travel credits commercial policy and we now had until the end of 2023 to use our travel credits (provided we book by 31 March 2023).

After some research we found suitable dates for flying and emailed Travelstart specific flight numbers and dates for Travelstart to quote on.

1. Travelstart took several days to reply to tell us our ticket validity had expired. I phoned the call centre and had to forward the email (from Travelstart) explaining our extended travel credits.

2. We had asked Travelstart to quote on 4 adults and 1 toddler (our baby had been born in the time since our original booking). After a few days we received a reply that we couldn't add passengers to our booking. I again phoned the call centre to find out if we could still get a quote on 2 adults flying.

(In the meantime the flight prices on Travelstart's website have increased by R3000 per person.)

3. Travelstart took 2 more days to reply with a slightly different flight combination to the one we had requested, at a fare quote of approx R16000 pp MORE than the same flight combination on Travelstart's website. I phoned the call centre again to find out why the difference in fares was so much higher. The person I spoke to explained that the ticket prices on the website were reserved for first time bookings and that I couldn't expect the same prices when rebooking. The agent I spoke to said they could see my specific request for flights was not quoted on and submitted an instruction to expedite a new quote with the flight combination we had originally requested.

4. Travelstart rep**** at 16:18 with a fare quote of R7000 pp MORE than the same flight combination shown on the Travelstart website. The email from Travelstart stated that "confirmation for the applicable change needs to be received by 16:30hrs SA time today." i.e. 12 minutes after the email was sent.

We are extremely frustrated: - although the call centre staff have always been very polite, friendly and knowledgable, the response time is excruciatingly slow and every delay pushes us closer to our 31 March rebooking deadline - the rebooking flight prices are ridiculous - why does a rebooking cost so much more than the same flights on Travelstart's own website? (If someone can assist us with a more reasonable rebooking price please let us know!)

I regret having booked tickets through Travelstart and would not recommend them to others - the risks and frustration are not worth it.

P.S. A suggestion for improvement would be for Travelstart to generate a discount code so that customers can complete their own rebookings on Travelstart's website and could avoid the cumbersome process of filling in a contact form and waiting for days for a response.