I tried to save over $700 by booking a flight through a budget travel agency. It backfired on the way home.

19.11.2023 - 12:39 / insider.com

I live for a cheap flight deal.

Recently, I pounced on a roundtrip flight from Vancouver, Canada, to Dublin for only $344 Canadian dollars, or about $250. This flight can typically cost over CA$1,000.

The deal was so good that I didn't give it a second thought when I had to book through an online travel agency instead of directly with the airline to score the low price.

A few months later, my husband and I were sipping Guinness and traipsing around the Cliffs of Moher. But our troubles began when we tried to get home.

The day before our return flight to Vancouver, I went to check in online like I always do. But I couldn't find our flight.

Panicked, I reached out to the airline, who let me know I would need to contact the travel agency we'd booked the flights through.

After hours of waiting on hold while paying long-distance call charges, I got to talk to someone at the agency and learned that our flight home had been canceled.

The agency hadn't bothered to inform us. Fortunately, they offered to book us another route home.

But instead of a direct flight, we were given a nightmarish three-layover, four-flight route. Our new itinerary had us flying from Dublin to London, London to New York, New York to Toronto, and finally, Toronto to Vancouver.

As a nervous flyer, I was dreading the long journey. But with no other options, we headed to the airport for a 6:30 a.m. departure from Dublin.

Unfortunately, our long travel day started out even longer: Our flight from Dublin to London was delayed.

By the time we reached London, we'd already missed our connecting flight to New York.

We headed to the airline's customer-service desk to see what they could do since I really didn't want to be on hold for hours to get back in touch with the travel agency.

That's when our luck changed. An agent at the desk saw our itinerary — and the bloodshot look in my tired eyes — and took pity on us.

She offered not just to rebook our connecting flights but to completely change our itinerary and put us on a direct flight to Vancouver that night.

We were so fortunate that the angel in customer service helped us, but I never want to test our luck again.

Many travel agencies may be perfectly fine and I'm glad I got my flight deal, but this experience was a nightmare.

In the future, I'll skip the middleman and book directly with an airline that'll notify me about canceled flights and be way easier to contact if they need to be rebooked.