Has anyone had good or bad experiences buying tickets from cheaptickets.com? I'm trying to decide whether I should buy from them or take the safer route by using Travelocity. On the route I'm looking at, Cheaptickets is $236, and Travelocity is $246 (this is for AUS-DEN on Frontier in late February). Any comments would be much appreciated.
(edited to add a minor detail)
[This message has been edited by bwp47 (edited Jan 26, 2004).]
Sorry i don't have specifics but i looked into a flight this summer on their site and they would not e-ticket and they charged 19.95 per ticket. Beware of such charges e-ticket or not from 3rd party sources. (This is probably the gist of what Sheryl is getting at).
Frontier is showing $301 for the same itinerary. The Cheaptickets fare appears to include taxes and fees - but I don't know if they will add something on when I try to purchase. It's also not clear to me whether you can earn miles when buying through Cheaptickets (though it's not a big deal since I almost never fly with Frontier and am not a member of their program).
They have to display the full charge to you before they charge your credit card.
While it is possible that is a valid fare, all travel agencies have been known to come back (sometimes several days later) and notify you that they could not book the fare. I would be surprised if Frontier allowed travel agencies to sell a fare cheaper than they will sell directly, but it is definitely possible.
Under their former ownership CT had a deal with ex-TWA financier Carl Icahn who had a deal with TW to sell 1000s of -really cheap- tix. You used to be able to buy 'em dirt cheap, now there is no more TW and in my experience CT is nowhere near the bargain it once was, to the point where I don't even bother with 'em anymore. If someone out there thinks different, please speak up.
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My only issue w/ them is that they are a consolidator - they buy the tickets in bulk and resell them to consumers - so if ANY issue comes up you have to deal w/ them and not the airline. The one flight I took with them we had some issues come up and CT was almost impossible to get a hold of or get help from. You also won;t be able to get a seat assignment.
They also do not e ticket so it may wind up being an equiv fare when you add on the ticket price.
Thanks for all the feedback. I finally decided to go with Travelocity in an effort to avoid any unpleasant surprises. Maybe some other time I'll give CheapTickets a try.
I have used them about 10 times without any problems for airline tickets. They are legit but take note, not all their fares give ff miles (but most do). Also their website aint the easiest to use and their telephone service sometimes aint much better, but you can get some substancial savings........ sometimes $300-400 for a few minutes of your time.
Was the fare on Travelocity also lower than on Frontier's website?
Hopefully everything will be fine, but I know of two instances when Travelocity has sent an email more than two days after the booking indicating they could not confirm the fare. One of those times caused the person to be locked out completely from any advance purchase fare.
