I am in the death throws of purchasing my first LONE5 (sorry for the dramatics, but it has been painful). The "contract" the TA wants me to sign has a $600 cancellation fee - which all goes to them (I presume to cover their Commission). I am feeling a bit agreived given the stuff ups and incorrect advice that has taken place and therefore questioned if this was normal. The answer, of course, was YES.

I figure I could just go straight to the QF, and not be subject to such a fee, or perhaps another agent might not be so high? I am happy to wear it if it is "normal".

Curious to know what others think / experiences?

I have come across agents putting charges in for cancellation. If you buy the ticket from them you will be accepting that condition. Personally, unless there is a good reason for using a TA ( e.g. buying in another country) I go straight to the airline

As far as normal goes, I wouldn't call it normal and I wouldn't buy from an agent that did it

Dave

Most agencies charge a service charge prior to doing anything. It's to cover their efforts in checking on tickets/fares for you. Usually this fee is nonrefundable.

However, it is unusual for an agency to charge you after you haven't paid them for services rendered to your satisfaction. In this case, you are not satisfied with their services and that is why you're walking.

I suggest calling the Australian Travel Trade board on this to get some sort of clarification. But generally, unless you have signed something to the fact that there is a cancellation fee, you should not have been charged.

Make sure your creditcard company knows about this in advance too that the TA is illegally charging something you have not authorised.

That certainly has not been my experience, but maybe I've been lucky. I try to make sure the TA is doing business with an airline that still pays a reasonable commission.

I have bought several RTWs, both in the US and Egypt, with no such cancelation fee.

Most US agencies will impose a service charge of some kind these days now. This will be a norm eventually when airlines keep cutting commissions from TAs.

But the OP is thinking of cancelling his booking. That's why the agency wanted to charge a fee. If he went on with his booking, the fee would have been covered by the commission.

But that's not always the case anymore. As Oneworld partners keep giving zero commissions on RTW, you will eventually have to pay a service fee. If it's just a ticket to be booked and issued, then maybe a flat fee is imposed. But as tickets get more and more complicated, and the travellers get more and more demanding with their requests and questions, the service fee goes up.

I know of agencies who do specialised services where their fees start at a flat fee of US$150 - US$200 to something like US$200 an hour!

A$600 is outrageously high for a service fee for booking a LONE5 fare. My last DONE4 booking service fee (non-refundable, paid to the TA) was under $100, and that agent worked really hard for it!

Of course, we have a commercial agreement with our corporate travel agent, and as such the fee is fixed. The TA then passes the corporate discount that our company has negotiated with QF directly to us. So I would expect a TA may want a slightly higher service fee, but A$600 seems way over the top to me.

Guy, I'm not thinking of cancelling my booking - it hasn't been ticketed yet.

Story so far:

TA email my itinerary and a list of their Terms and Conditions - the $600 cancellation fee is one of the terms. At the bottom of the email is a signature block.

I decided to read the Terms much more closely than I normally would once I discovered the stuff ups in the itinerary (1 flight missing, 4 flights in wrong order). The Terms included many of the things in that are already in the STAR file, such as $75 fee for routing change. The $600 cancellation claused seemed to come from nowhere. When I enquired, the TA confirmed this was their own rule and that they were the benificiaries. TA also said this was "normal".

I already know that I don't have a cancellation fee if I deal direct with QANTAS, but today I asked a couple of other TAs in town (Darwin) - all thought $600 was excessive.

I have given them no reason to think I am likley to cancel. What I found most offensive was the assertion that a cancellation fee of $600 is "normal" or standard. Adding to my anger is the incorrect advice on simple rules - the TAs asserted that you can never backtrack bewteen continents. Incidently, when I challanged that assertion, the TA responded with "I've booked 100s of these ... but I'll check it out with QF". If it weren't for my doing lots of homework and much assistance form everyone here I wouldn't have got the trip I wanted. Okay, now I am ranting!

I've stewed on this for a few days, and I think I'm ready to find myself another TA (I'd prefer to use a TA than go straight to QANTAS). Wish me luck!

In Manila, if you cancel booking already ticketed after 12noon day before your flight, you are assessed USD 50.00 . If you refund a ticket, they charge you all sort of stuff plus USD 25.00 for the cost of the ticket. Looks like there is an outrageous fee every step of the way in todays travel.

Is there any particular reason you don't want to deal directly with QANTAS? If there's a TA you have a particuarly good relationship with or is willing to give you a decent discount I could understand it, but if not you might find it easier dealing with QANTAS direct. I know I certainly found it beneficial to be able to pick up the phone any time of the day or night to make changes before I commenced my trip (my understanding is that if you book through a TA then you have to go through the TA for any changes until you've commenced travel). Then again I think it's made easier by having status with QANTAS too (at least wait times are shorter when you dial up anyway), your mileage may vary depending on what status you have.

That fee is amazing. I've never heard of anything like it before. I've noticed that travel.com.au charges their own little change fee on domestic flights, but that's about it.

IME, most TAs know almost nothing about RTWs. They ticket very few of them and they find the rules too complex for their little minds to cope with. As someone who knows what you want, I believe the best thing to do is check the online prices (eg. Qantas and travel.com.au) and then ask TAs what price they'll give you, and go to the cheapest one. I've only done Star RTWs, but I've always got $100-200 off the airline price and with no strange extra fees.

As a practical matter the RTW tickets accrue cost for flown segments so quickly that once you have flown 2 or 3 segments there is zero remaining value on the ticket, thus cancellation of a RTW really only applies if you decide to not take the trip and cancel before taking any of the flights. Thus the TA's cancellation fee is relevant only if you think you won't be making this trip after all; personally I think it is a reasonable fee, a bit high (I would expect about half that, esp. on an LONE5), but switching TAs may cause you to lose any flights presently booked and it may not have inventory available for the same flight/date when your new TA goes to rebook.