travelwriter

I just read an article by Christopher Elliott, ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine, who tells us that the most common errors made by passengers purchasing airlines tickets include having the wrong name on their ticket.

As a former Certified Travel Consultant and travel agency owner, I agree that this was one of the most common problems that occurred with our customers.

I had a passenger, let’s say her name was Jane Smith, who purchased a ticket to travel to Asia.  She purchased a 100% non-refundable non-changeable ticket.  When we received her ticket (purchased through another travel supplier), we proceeded to go over the details of the ticket with her.

This is when she announced that her passport actually says Mary Jane Smith.  What?!  You have got to be kidding me?!!   And this was when I spent the next several hours on the phone trying to rectify the situation – through no fault of our own (like, seriously.  When you ask a person their name, you expect them to be accurate and truthful) – and I finally got the airline to agree to the passenger paying a $350 change fee plus purchasing a new ticket at a higher price.  I believe the cost to our client was an additional $800 for her mistake.  And again, please realize that this was a non-changeable ticket.

But Ms. Smith insisted this was OUR mistake.  It was a miracle that the airline gave her any concessions with the ticket and I explained that she should have been grateful and happy with our progress.  Otherwise she could have lost the entire $2600 ticket.  But to no avail, she was still not a happy camper because she had to pay the additional $800.  Even if she would have purchased trip cancellation insurance, this would not have helped in a case such as this.

So in order to avoid this most unpleasant situation in the future, we immediately instructed our staff to ask for the clients full legal name as it would appear on their passport.  In fact, we even started asking to see their passports up front which led us to another problem which I’ll cover next time……

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