Travelocity *Warning*
 

FYI to all Fodors readers.

Last week I booked several Egypt Air flights on Travelocity for travel within Egypt. I paid by CC and received a confirmation email.

I called Egypt Air directly to ask a question and confirm my reservations. I was told the my first flight (Cairo - Luxor) was NOT confirmed, but was waitlisted.

This is despite the fact that I had a confirmed reservation from Travelocity. I called travelocity and was pretty obviously routed to a call center in India. They told me all flights were confirmed. When I insisted that they check this, they did and came back and told me I was correct, my first flight was waitlisted.

They had no answer as to why I was sold a confirmed reservation and really could provide no help at all, even at the supervisor level.

Keep this in mind if you use Travelocity!

i would like to say thanks and i, too, had a bad experience with travelocity on tickets between mauritius and madagascar.

my situation was similar- thought i had tickets at a price and paid with cc and was awaiting confirmation. received email confirmation, but no tickets the next day (i had paid for fedex).

took several phone calls to learn that travelocity "did not have the plates" to issue tickets on the airlines they sold me, and never bothered to tell me- just left me waiting for tickets they were never going to send.

i thought this was outrageous and akin to false advertising and if i had more time i would have taken it up with the bbb, but warnings like this (and being very vigilant about your own planning) is about the best we can hope for.

this happened in october 2004.

p.s.

it all worked out when i contacted the airlines directly and got a better price for the exact same routing...so as convenient as it seemed, it really was not worth the trouble...

Thanks for the stories and warnings

I don't know if this is what happended, but aparetly if you book with Egyptair they do not confirm the tickets till a few days before the flght. For every flight we took within Egypt, our travel agent had to call about a day or two to confirm.I too booked throught travelocity, btu had no problem, but our travel guide confirmed our flights. It was very different that what we are us to here not having a confirmation. so if you book yourself you may want the conciere to confirm your flight ahead of time. Or agent told us otherwise they will out you on a wiat list or worse just giev your seat away.

CWanderer, you are confusing confirmation with re-confirmation. EgyptAir, and most airlines will confirm your flight when you are ticketed (ignoring the overbooking issues here). And they should not issue a ticket if you are just waitlisted, but it is possible to do and there are some valid reasons for doing so.

But many airlines, particularly in Africa, require you to REconfirm flights 48 to 72 hours before the flight. They use this to reduce the overbooking problem and to be able to efficiently use the available seats.

Because few American and other "main" carriers require this reconfirmation process, many people don't think the reconfirmation process is all that important. But it is...if you want to get home.