Originally Posted by
FlyingUnderTheRadar
Why does the flight being domestic make a difference?
Originally Posted by
flyerCO
Not sure on domestic vs international, AFAIK doesn't make any difference except maybe with currency conversion.
Difference is who has money, and thus to whom bank will be dealing if must chargeback.
Conceivably, either domestic or international could be chargd to FH's own credit card or to an agency charge account such that FH is paying the carrier for the ticket rather than charging the passenger's card via the airline's merchant account. This occurs occaisionally with bulk/consolidator fares, which are mostly international tickets as well.
Originally Posted by
Dick Ginkowski
Obviously not a good situation. The reality is that the days of snagging a truly bargain fare are less and less and many of these supposedly low-fare websites are neither cheap or transparent. They bury important details in fine print, charge extra for basic reservation services, charge more for seat assignments (if available at all), provide no service for disabled travelers, etc.
This is the entire business model. They will lose money or make nothing on 80-90% of tickets and make it up on the rest with egregious fees.
Originally Posted by
Utskicat
As
flyerCO and others have stated there are some valid reasons to use an OTA on occasion. There are many that are not scummy like FlightHub. The big 3 (Expedia, Travelocity, and Priceline) all respect 24h RFC. I'm sure there are other smaller OTA's that have decent ethics too.
While not scummy, the business model is still to limit human interaction, hire very few (if any) seasoned agents to assist customers when such interaction is the last resort, and often make up rules/airline policies as they go along to minimize their effort vs get the right answer/result. I don't think there are many smaller Online Travel Agencies surviving, as web traffic is name of the game. The ony value for the OTAs (particularly for domestic air) is drawing more web traffic to the site in hopes of selling other products, mainly hotel bookings.