Question About Ticket Consolidators
 

I am looking for two roundtrip tickets between Atlanta and London for July. I'll be coming back after about 10 days but my son will be staying three weeks. I was navigating to a consolidator site recommended by one of our area consumer "gurus" and my anti-virus program went into overload---warning me to stay off the site because it could not guarantee I would not pick up malware and/or a virus at the site.

I've never bought tickets from a consolidator before and wonder if the prices are really that much lower than buying them the regular way (from airlines or online agents such as Orbitz, travelocity, etc.). Has anyone used consolidator tickets to London, and if so, which company did you contact? I have qualms now about using the website but if there are really ***unbeatable** deals I would probably risk it and then scan my computer afterwards. Right now I'm coming up with about $981 as the best price for either ticket.

I've done a search of both the Europe and Airlines forums, and the latest post is from 2007... thanks in advance for any replies.

kswl - I never use those agencies, because I've read a lot about "bait and switch" advertising. They advertise $200r/t to Atlanta to London, but when you click on their link, you'll see that those tickets are currently unavailable, but the ones at $500 r/t are. Most of them are truly "too good to be true".

My sis-in-law has bought tickets via cheaptickets twice. Both worked out okay but she had rather complicated itinerary involving multiple flights on different airlines. When one of the flight schedule was changed which rendered the rest of the flights impossible to connect to, she literally wasted days on end on the phone with cheaptickets to get them change the flights. Customer service was very poor.

Another minor issue, is most consolidator tickets are not eligible for earning miles. So you're talking about throwing away 8000+miles.

a Kayak search brought up $971 on Continental. I found $900 on the BA site. Are you signed up with an airline?

I'm signed up with all of them. Today the prices dropped just a bit!

We are still trying to decide what to do in a sort of global sense.... DS must be in London 7/14 - 8/7. I am going to fly over with him and get him settled, then will be staying at least a week either in London or traveling (alone or with my husband). DH says we (son and I) should take the opportunity and add a week onto each end of the trip to travel and have fun :) That would put me out of the country for about five weeks unless I went home for a few weeks and then flew back. I don't know now what to do !

As was discussed in a similar thread...

consolidators are fine unless something goes wrong..if something does go wrong I'd much rather be dealing even with an orbitz or travelocity then a consolidator.

However there are certainly reputable consolidators, so if the virus program is telling oyu NOT to go to a certain site you might check other consolidators like cheaptickets.com.

if oyu post the consolidator site I'd be willing to go there myself - I have a mac and most viruses aren't a problem for me.

Thanks, mztery. I tried it again last night and got no warning---and hope that doesn't mean I am already infected with whatever the site is sporting :(

The site was useless---the tickets route one tediously and are MORE expensive than what I was able to find on kayak. Thanks very much for your offer, though, and the suggestion, as DS has a mac that I could use but didn't think of it.