When travelling at home or abroad, we all strive to get the best (or cheapest) deals possible, but this can sometimes bring trouble and, on occasions, prove to be far more costly overall.
From personal experience traveling this year, I have become increasingly wary of the online comparison sites for both flights and car hire, more so than for hotels/apartments.
Flights
This year two of my trips were booked via the same online platform - Expedia.
The first trip involved four long-haul flights around the world and fortuitously, everything went according to plan.
My second trip was a short-haul flight in the UK, and this didn't go according to plan. There was a mix up between Expedia and the carrier Air Lingus, which meant I was unable to board my flight on arrival at Manchester Airport.
This is where you find that there are no effective lines of communicating with the online platform (in this case Expedia) to either, solve the issue in the airport at the time, or for getting any form of compensation afterwards.
It's fair to say, that Expedia are 100% awful at communication in the event of something going wrong, they literally do not answer any emails and there is no effective telephone number to call. They don't want to know you.
In hindsight I am so glad that nothing went wrong on my first long-haul trip as the consequences could have been awfully expensive if alternative flights had had to be booked at my expense.
On my second flight I was able to book a cheap one-way flight at £19 with Ryanair slightly later than my original Air Lingus flight so all was not lost.
The moral of this is that you need to be careful who you chose to provide your flight requirements. Booking directly with the carrier is the ideal scenario but not always the cheapest.
And yes, Expedia is now on my Travel Blacklist, and I will NEVER use them again.
Car Hire
Again, it's a similar story with car hire.
My recent experience in Sydney when I was advised 10 hours before picking up my prearranged car that the booking was cancelled (after taking the money off me) lead to a four month email battle between Car Trawler (the online comparison site that recommended the best deal), EasyCar in Sydney (who accepted the booking and took the money), Alpha Cars in Sydney (who were subcontracted the job by EasyCar) and myself.
Once more, I had to make alternative more costly arrangements with another car hire company to solve the problem of no car on arrival at Sydney International.
But when it came to reclaiming my deposit, this is where Car Trawler, EasyCar and Alpha all miraculously disappeared into the ether. Trying to talk to them or communicate with them has been impossible. No-one will take any responsibility when it's a multi-party agreement. There are no direct contact numbers, everything has to be done online and, in the end, they collectively washed their hands of the dispute, hiding behind the cloak of anonymity, regularly ignoring my requests for more information and for action to resolve the issue.
Fortunately, and it's something I do with ALL my travel requirements, I booked the car hire on my credit card. In the end, frustrated by the brick wall that I was banging my head against, I registered my claim with the Credit Card company, who have taken up the complaint on my behalf and refunded me my money.
The moral of the story is to be careful who you book with when looking at cheap car hire deals.
I will NEVER use Car Trawler again and on my next trip to Australia EasyCar and Alpha Cars have joined Expedia and Car Trawler on my Travel Blacklist.
Hotel Accommodation
We all use online platforms like Booking, Hotels, Trivago, Air B'n'B, etc when choosing our travel hotels and to be honest, these generally work well. And the worst-case scenario if you don't get the accommodation you booked, there is usually other accommodation available, and I always chose to pay direct on arrival instead of in advance.
So, I don't have the same concerns with this sector of the online travel platform business.
As you can see, there is a theme here, and I strongly recommend you being really careful when booking your travel journeys online. Get it wrong and it can potentially cost you far more than you bargained for.
Safe traveling!
I usually do a comparison then go direct to the airline, same with car hire, airbnb or booking.com. for accommodation - I’m currently putting together an epic road trip covering a third of Aussie NSW, Central Coast, Queensland & Northern territories, 2026 on a budget!