How to avoid overpaying for a travel visa on an airline website

28.03.2024 - 22:01 / thepointsguy.com / Airlines

Jay Raman says booking his family's recent flight to Auckland, New Zealand, on Delta Air Lines was a snap. He was particularly impressed by how easy it was to apply for the required New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority visas directly through a portal on the airline's website.

That portal took Raman from the Delta website to Sherpa, a third-party travel visa processor. After entering the details of each of his five family members and paying a total of $532.50, he soon had those electronic travel visas. How convenient, he thought.

However, a few days later, as he continued his travel planning, budget-minded Raman got an unpleasant surprise. He learned that the New Zealand government charges U.S citizens just 17 New Zealand dollars ($10) for NZeTAs via a free app.

Since that day, he's been trying to find out why his family was charged 10 times that amount.

With neither Delta Air Lines nor Sherpa able to explain the highly inflated cost of those NZeTAs, Raman turned to TPG. He hoped we could solve this mystery and get a refund for the overcharge.

So, what really happened?

Last fall, Raman says that a sale on the Delta website led his family to finally take a trip to New Zealand. It was a destination they had wanted to visit for some time, and the cost of the tickets was within their budget for the upcoming Christmas holiday.

After purchasing the tickets, he was directed to FlyReady, a tool on the Delta Air Lines site designed to help customers prepare for their international flights by checking their travel documents. Those checks are done by third-party companies. However, Raman didn't know that.

He says the look and feel of the page gave him the impression that the information was being provided by Delta.

"I added our passport information and then there was a button to check if we needed visas to travel," he said. "Upon clicking through to that page which has a header of 'Sherpa + Delta' with the official Delta logo, the message informed me that it was $106.50 for each visa. Given the look of this website and seeing the Delta logo, I presumed that everything was above board and no price gouging would occur.

As a person not versed in visa requirements, I trusted this to be what it costs, and purchased five visas for my party at the total cost of $532.50."

But as he continued planning his family's once-in-a-lifetime trip, he was shocked to discover just how much money he could have saved had he applied for those visas without the assistance of Sherpa and became convinced that he had, in fact, been a victim of price gouging.

"When I looked at the New Zealand government's website, I saw that I could have applied for our travel visas directly at a total cost of around $50!" Raman said. "I felt bamboozled