TravelStart will TravelStop your next vacation!

Around September 2020, myself and two friends enthusiastically made travel arrangements to the Eastern Cape to visit a friend through Travelstart! The trip was to be in two months - toward the end of November 2020.

This proved to be a really bad decision!

When we got to the airport on the day there were issues with two of our bookings! We were early for our flights so had time to try clear this up with the airline ticket office.

The office indicated that the problem needed to be resolved by Travelstart. They attempted several times to call their emergency number to no avail!

Long story short, we were running out of time and I had to make the decision to buy two more (now dearer) tickets lest all our plans are scuppered!

I took as much evidence as possible (of the receipts for the new tickets, their “emergency” email address and contact numbers, flight and booking numbers, etc) and thought to take this up with the company upon my return.

I naively expected that a responsible and experienced travel company would summarily resolve this matter once I had handed over them the evidence!

Boy was I wrong!

In early December I wrote to Travelstart explaining what happened. Over several weeks I received platitudes and stonewalling responses from this company with no resolution of the matter nor any real feedback on progress either than the typical passing on of the buck by clueless bureaucrats!

It is now well over a month since I wrote to Travelstart (on their emergency contacts no less) and now my emails are simply met with absolute silence; presumably waiting for the one bureaucrat to return from their holidays, while I sit out of pocket from this ordeal!

If you don’t want this to happen to you, stay away from those guys! Book direct with the airline, which is the advice I have now duly noted!!

I ended up paying more than double the airfare I had booked well in advance! Don’t let it happen to you!!