As a FT guy, I usually book all my air, hotel, car reservations myself on the individual provider's web site. So I have never needed atravel agent. I'm fairly new to cruising (on a ship) and I have booked Princess and Disney direct with the cruiselines. For our first Crystal cruise it seemed that direct booking was not possible. Once before I had used ecruise store in 2007. Although they did a double charge at that time, they told me it had to do with a merging of two companies. They did promptly refund the overcharge.

So I used them again. I thought it was an honest mistake. My bad! I am also on cruisecritic. On that board it is not allowed to mention agents by name. So I had no warning.

I now have a real live person TA whom I can use when an agent is required.