Asia Travels

Note my previous enthusiastic entry about Boracay.  But somehow or rather the trip has already been spoiled by the existence of this online travel agency: asiatravel.com.

Booked our flights through them.  Had such difficulty securing the flights From Singapore to Manila to Kalibo because the system that promised “instant confirmation” kept hanging on me.

Pissed off, I made the bookings for the flights Singapore to Manila, and approached the resort that I will be staying at in Boracay to assist me in booking the transfer flights.  Well, because it was done as a favour, I shan’t comment much on the efficiency.

However, as the dates were drawing near and there was still no reply from my beloved resort, I decided to take matters into my own hands and placed a booking on AsiaTravel again.

This time for a flight from Manila to Kalibo.  The online travel agent had the audacity to actually deduct the amount for the tickets i’ve booked, sent me a confirmation that I’ve placed the booking and send me an authorisation form for the credit card owner (Justin’s Mum and then resend an EMAIL only stating that due to the fact that the tickets weren’t available, we will do a full refund.

Just an automated seeming reply, without a follow up phone call or further explanation so to why they allowed this incident to happen.  Imagine the horror!

First in the fact that internet transactions actually happen like that! and the fact that when I had so happily brushed the load off my mind that we had secured tickets. )*$#&)$*(

One can’t imagine the level of anger.

But well. decided that i rather solve the problem and not start to yell.  Thus I booked another pair of tickets on the same airline (they are the only ones who deal with internal flights in Philippines)

THE SAME THING HAPPENED!

FUCK!

Justin wrote it and make a hoo- ha.. then they came back with this ten-liner reasoning of why they had allowed this to happen.

And because I felt that the matter was dealt too late, without efficiency and basically had created such a bad week for me.

I felt obliged to share this HORRIBLE CONSUMER EXPERIENCE with you guys (whoever reads my blog).

DO NOT BOOK WITH ASIA TRAVELS.

simply because although they have made the refund, i do not think that the explanation given and how it was conducted was a sufficient action to sooth two very angry, spoiled pre-holiday mood people…

Although in the end, an agent by the name of Gillian manage to secure two tickets for me, From Manila to Kalibo and back, it was with many phone calls to her that we manage to get the whole thing done and finalised.

*will post up the letters they sent to us up soon. *

I repeat do not book with asia travel and do spread this message around. Simply because I do not think that is the right way to conduct a business transaction.