Am I missing something here?

Seriously, travel insurance is perhaps the sleaziest form of insurance ever. My travel agent referred me to a shaky third party agency? Well, if you didn’t get travel insurance, too bad. I booked a trip and then a death occurred in my family and I had to cancel one month before the tour?. I didn’t get travel insurance? Too bad.

Joel, you have definitely convinced me to NEVER go to a travel agency. If you don’t think that travel agents should take any responsibility for their referrals – well what the heck are they for?

I am sure there are lots of honest TA’s out there but I have not met them and don’t know how to tell them apart. Being a member of the travel agent club (ATTHA or whatever it is) is no guarentee the will be honest and not rip you off.

I, too, have learned the hard way. I can not say I will never use a travel agent again but I just don’t see it happening. Now I make all arrangements personally and its not as hard to do as some would have you believe. Now I KNOW where the money went. Lessons learned

I AGREE 100% with you to call (or go online) to confirm everything.

Spending some time to double-check your trip itinerary is peace of mind to KNOW that everything is taken care of BEFORE your vacation starts.

If there is a problem, you have a chance of resolving it before you get to your destination.

Just add it to your pre-vacation checklist of checking the weather at your destination, stopping newspaper delivery, arranging for a pet sitter, etc.

Call it Common Sense 101 :) !

Mike

When I was billed, I called Platinum Amex Travel to inform them. They told me that that agent no longer worked there and they would not honor what he promised. I went “up the ladder” and finally, a manager told me that it was true that it was entered in their computer, they would not honor the ex-agent’s promise.

I then told them that I would not pay my current bill (it was over $10,000) and wait for them to sue me. [THEY NEVER DO THIS, BY THE WAY. THEY TURN IT OVER TO COLLECTION AND THREATEN YOUR CREDIT RATING - This never intimidates because my rating is extremely high]. I also know that when you “settle” with a collection agency, and you often can do this for 50 cents on the dollar, the agency gets a commission on what they settle for which could be as high as 50%.

Final. The manager decided that discretion was the better part of valor and agreed to credit me with what their agent promised. I paid my bill within my normal time frame – about 48 hrs.

An afterword. At credit card banks, people like me (those who always pay in full, on time, and never incur any interest, late charges, or penalties, are known in industry jargon as “A DEADHEAD”.

MORT HERMAN, DEADHEAD

Personally, I think there’s criminal fraud going on in some of these cases. I don’t care if “Happy Vacations” goes out of business suddenly or not — there’s no excuse for the money not to have been sent immediately to Sandals. It’s not like ordering, say, custom cabinets, where the money is paying for workers to build them, etc. There’s no justifiable reason for a travel company to “store” your money instead of forwarding it immediately; travel agencies aren’t supposed to be a Ponzi scheme. If the owners have really opened another business, I’d consider hunting them down at work and home and threatening to press both criminal and civil charges unless they personally reimburse the money they stole.

At least if they had used expedia or travelocity those companies don’t go out of business.

I have to respectfully disagree. You and Chris believe that the traveler bears responsibility for confirming travel. However, math is against both of you. Consider that approximately 2 million people fly worldwide each day. That would be an awful lot of phone calls to the travel providers.