Why travelstart rebookable tickets is a ****.

I believe Travelstart offer their option to pay extra for a rebookable flight with no intention of actually honouring the agreement.

According to them 58% of all their customers buy this option. Furthermore, their cancellation policy is outright bullying. The reasons, and evidence, for these allegations, are given below.

Firstly, I booked flight tickets for 2 adults and 1 child through tripadvisor for a trip to Kristiansand in Norway. I selected the option to have rebookable flights. This option cost me an additional R795.00 per person. At no stage during the entire booking process does their website or communications provide any information about the class of ticket, other than the fact that is economy class and that I have chosen the additional option of being able to rebook. Their conditions state the following:

“Any changes to the dates on your current ticket will be charged with the difference in ticket price AND airline penalty fees. If you upgrade to a rebookable flight, you can rebook your flight for another date up to 24 hours before departure and pay no penalty fees for rebooking.”

After receiving my tickets I realised I selected an itinerary where I will arrive at the destination on KLM flight KL1211 which arrives at 23:00 instead of KL1209 which arrives at 17:35. I then contacted travelstart to request they rebook that leg. They refuse to rebook the leg and claims that my ticket is “class L” and no rebooking options is available for this except if I’m willing to upgrade to business class (which I cannot afford at all). Their own website showed, and still shows, that many economy class tickets for the exact itinerary I desire is in fact available. They simply do not wish to pay the penalties the airline would levy against changing “class L” tickets to another economy option. My opinion is that this is precisely what I paid for when I took the additional option to rebook. They refuse to honour this and will also not refund me.

I requested the option of being refunded and they quoted me the option to cancel by paying an additional “Service fees :R3891.62(nonrefundable)” and then I would have to wait 6-8 weeks to receive my money back. Since very few customers would be able to carry that much credit and then still afford the international flights I believe this is clearly an attempt to bully me to “drop the complaint”

I believe any reasonable South African consumer would interpret the option to have a rebookable flight in exactly the same way I did. I also believe that the fact that they knew I might want to rebook and still chose a class/category of ticket that makes this impossible makes this their mistake and not mine, and therefor they should be held accountable for it.