I generally book flights directly from airlines, but when Kayak showed a lower fare through FlightHub (a travel agency based in Canada), back in November 2019, I went with them. I understood at the time that the airfare was non refundable, and I was willing to take the risk thinking what could possibly throw a gigantic Covid wrench into my travel plans. Hmm.
Luckily Royal Air Maroc cancelled all flights last April, and we were given a chance to reschedule our non refundable ticket for a later date, but the ticket had to be used within 18 months from when it was purchased, which meant I needed to book the trip by 4/9/2021. So we rescheduled our Morocco flight for 4/3/2020 back in Nov of last year.
Fast forward to today, and to make a long story short – our Boston outbound flight was cancelled, but FlightHub never told us it was cancelled, just that there was a change and didn’t bother to tell us what the change was. They didn’t offer to help with re-booking either. I ended up contacting FlightHub after Vicky told me that there is no longer a Boston to Casablanca flight on that day, but there is a flight out of JFK. So I requested that we change our outbound flight to JFK, and the customer representative assured me that I would get a confirmation within 48 hours. Of course that didn’t happen. So I called again, and now I was told it would be a week because airlines are swamped with change requests, and they haven’t been able to get through. I then posed the question, “what happens if I don’t get a resolution by next week?” The lady reassured me that they would definitely get back to me by then, and was getting impatient with me (you never talk to the same customer service rep, and they are just basically kicking the can down the road). As a cynical Gen Xer, my motto is Trust No One. I got off the line, called Royal Air Maroc directly and was patched through within 2 minutes and had our new outbound flight from JFK confirmed within 20 minutes.
Moral of the story: Do not ever book through FlightHub. In fact, in this day in age, there is absolutely no reason to use a travel agent (unless you’re going on a luxury safari), because no one cares about your trip as much as you do. So if you want everything done right, do it yourself.
Morocco here we come!