Take your money and nearly impossible to get the reimbursement.
So I booked a flight via skyscanner which direct me to this online travel agent: Tripsta.qa
I booked a two ways flight for Paris to Athens and vice versa.
Suddenly I realized a huge mistake I made that there is a stopover for the paris-Athens which is in Ukraine. As a foreigner, I got only Schengen visa which is not include Ukraine and getting visa for Ukraine will be much more complicated and costly since we do not live in Paris.
I directly contacted the customer service to cancel this flight.But they always take 3 days to respond.The contact number that they provide is not reachable.
Eventhough I want to cancel it not in a last minute (I booked my ticket at 22nd of May, my flight is on 10th of July and I began to write them on 28th of May). They told me the reimbursent will be only 156 € and actually I paid 634€ for these flights. The customer service that replying you will change from time to time, so you are obliged to repeat your answer again and again.
I checked on their website that the reimbursement depend on Airlines regulation. In addition, tripsta will charge 40€ per passanger for cancelation. Well isnt it too much to lose 554€ (634€-80€).So I contacted them again to know what is the details of my reimbursement. Then they stop replying to me. It has been 4 days since my last mail and I do not know what to do.
The most unprofessional thing in their respond is that they try not to answer directly to your question. I asked for cancellation several times then they respond " we need to make sure that the second passanger prefer to cancel as well". I clearly mentioned that "we do not have visa to enter Ukraine", of course the second passanger will cancel it as well.
Then I remarked that in their mail, they told that "please be aware that cancellation fees may change depending on the days prior to departure". This is why they always try to prolong the conversations. I cancel it 1 month begore my departure and until this time (2 weeks before my departure), nothing is clear for me. In the end probably I will not get any reimbursement because they will create 1000 reasons to not give your money back.
I red that there are many similar cases like this with tripsta.co.uk and tripsta.au and every tripsta actually. Actually when I checked their reputation online, I got mix reviews, but now I think the good reviews are fake review.
I am sorry but I am extremely upset with my decision to use this service.I am travelling quite often and normally booked my ticket from the airlines directly (which is more transparent in terms of cancellation etc.)
Just avoid tripsta.qa (it is not cheaper when you have to face this kind of problem).
June 23, 2015
Unprompted review
