Originally Posted by Often1

It is fine to book through one of the opaque vendors such as Orbitz or Expedia. That is, unless something goes wrong and you need it fixed. With the exception of day-of-travel IRROPS, you are stuck dealing with a vendor which only makes money on volume and loses money as soon as it has to have a live interaction with you.

FT is littered with the bad happenings from people who may even have saved a few dollars (or Euros) but wound up spending a lot more.

In particular, DL does not charge a phone booking fee, so there is no issue in speaking with a DL agent who, if they louse up the ticketing, can and will fix it.