Great to hear RainyDay! Makes me feel better about the whole situation, although I'll keep my eye on my flight info just incase someone tries to switch things up on me.

Not sure about the deleted post, I assume it was an advertisement...

I checked a multiple flight for Europe and the total with taxes included was $926.

I wonder are you allowed to choose your seat?
Usually I always ask for the aisle seat because I want the freedom to be able to get up and walk around anytimes that I want without disturbing the other passenger.

What a relief, Rainy Day! Glad to hear it.

kismetchimera - i booked my flight with airfare.com and then you can log on to the airlines website with your reservation number and choose your own seat.

Wow, now I'm nervous! I just booked, too, but I ended up on airfare.com from an aggregator I usually trust: bing travel.

Now I'm really terrified of the last minute cancellations. But I'll be doing what everyone suggested: checking in as often as possible with the airlines to be sure that it doesn't magically disappear.

But Rainy Day, yours turned out OK? I'll be sure to keep everyone posted, but I really really wish I had just chucked in the extra $70 to book somewhere else.

Hi roby_D, I felt just like you but it went fine. Just make sure to call the airline and tell them that you have concerns with this consolidator. You can also choose your seat when you call the airline.

Thanks RainyDay. I just feel silly -- I'm usually so careful about where I book, and I've been a longtime vayama/orbitz user, but their flight times for my trip days were more expensive, so I thought, what's the harm? It had been a long day at school, and I was rushing, so I didn't take time to google the company first.

Then I ran into these complaints. I already checked and I do have an eTicket on all the airlines, but I'm going to be checking them constantly until the departure (Washington to Budapest) on 3/4. But I have to say, the negative reports have me a nervous wreck, too. Next time, I won't move in a rush!

I'll be sure to let everyone know how it all goes. If I run into any problems, at least I live with a journalist from The Washington Post.

Thanks Alliesun10..We are still undecided where we want to go first, Amsterdam or Rome.

I'm not traveling till July.. so unfortunately I have months and months to be nervous! I wish you the best of luck roby_d, please report back! If you and Rainy Day both have smooth trips, I might feel a little more secure :)

You guys will all let me know how it goes and if you have problems. I am curious now....

Will do, Jill et all. I am being crazy paranoid now. Honestly, after I started hearing this stuff, I started losing sleep.

The site LOOKED like every other online booking site I have used, but as soon as I got the email confirmation, it just looked...well...not the same. And then I started Googling. And then I REALLY wished I hadn't been click happy and had just booked with the airline itself.

Please keep your fingers crossed for me this March 4. I'm just a poor teacher, who really wanted to finally take a spring break that didn't involve essay grading, and if something goes wrong, well, there is no way for me to re-coup that money.

And, if something should go wrong, I'm also calling you all as witnesses :-) My flight is confirmed by ALL the airlines as of today, and I swear I will not cancel or change the dates (teachers can't ever go anywhere except on school breaks!) Just to put it in writing...

be sure to get TICKET NUMBERS not just reservation (PNR) numbers to insure at least that the tickets have been issued.

I did; and I have actually checked every day since (god, the airlines must HATE me). I have an e-ticket number, but my bigger concern is the stories online of the company canceling tickets even with the ticket issued :-(

I'm just so worried. But the company popped up in both Bing and Kayak, aggregators I always have used with no problem. Plus, I read regularly about them in The New York Times travel section, so I didn't question purchasing, until I just started googling. It worries me that there are so many stories on the web, and yet, they still seem to be running

make sure that the airline has your phone number and email address. If there are any changes with your flights, the airline will contact Airfare.com right now. If you change contact information on file, they'll call you instead.

I used airfare.com a couple of years ago myself for a flight to London, through a search result I got from kayak and the price difference between what they were quoting me and through the airline directly was quite huge. I did check on this board and a couple of other boards to see if anyone else had any experience with them and at that time, I only got a couple of responses, both saying that they didn't experience any problems. I was still hesitating because 2 responses didn't seem reassuring enough :) I couldn't really find anything else on them such as the link posted above.

The biggest drawback was the cancellation and change fees which was a big consideration in deciding whether or not to book with them. The price difference between the price they were offering and the airline directly was so huge that even with the huge penalties, rebooking/cancellation, etc. in the end, I would still end up paying less than booking directly with the airline. So I just decided to bite the bullet. Of course, after I got the email response, like everyone said, it made me nervous but when I called the airline directly to ask them if they had my booking, they confirmed all of them, so that was quite reassuring.

And then they had the bombing in London, yikes!(I think this was 2006?) about a week before our departure date and a lot of the airlines were voluntarily cancelling flights without charging any fees. Again, because any rescheduling was going to be done through airfare.com and not the airline directly, I called airfare.com to find out how they were handling the cancellations and the fees, they basically told me that it depended on the airline. If the airline was not imposing fees to voluntarily cancel the flight, they were going to honor the same! I actually couldn't believe it. In the end, by the time we left, things had settled down a bit and the flight went as scheduled. I did not encounter any problems at all either on either flights.

I know that it's just one more anecdote but hopefully that helps.

It does, and I'll keep everyone posted. I'm being obsessive about checking and re-checking the confirmation of the flight -- it's all eTicketed by the airlines now --- so hopefully, in a month's time, I can report back some good news.

In the meantime, keep your good thoughts coming my way please :-) I just got an important invitation to speak over there, which will be a big professional boost, so now I have even more reasons to pray I don't get scammed here!

roby_D, don't stress yourself out. Hopefully, it will be very uneventful. Our flight booked on airfare.com was, despite the scare and sleepless nights induced by chatting with fodorites about the website.

roby_D, good luck tomorrow!

Just got back: it all went well! Got to Budapest & back without any flight problems (and had a great time to boot)

To those that are still stressing -- I'd say just check regularly with the airline -- that's what I did. Probably annoyed the heck out of Continental/United, but probably once a week i checked. United (the actual operator) actually even agreed to put a little notice on my reservation, saying that you had to have a password to make changes.

Still, from now on, I'm sticking with sites I know, like Orbitz and Vayama. In fact, I wish Bing would just removed airfare.com for all the stress it seems to cause.

Good luck to all!

Please post a trip report, when you have time, roby-D