There was a time a while ago when booking with and agent was the normal thing to do when booking a flight. I was too young to really be a part of these days but my father frequently traveled for work and his flight arrangements were always handled by an agent. Then in the 90's things transitioned to the point where almost all agencies went out of business because they couldn't possibly compete with the low prices of websites like Expedia and Travelocity. Then the internet did what the internet always does and they got to competing a bit too much on price and the breadwinners ended up being what site could keep their internal costs the lowest and this normally meant by having as few staff as possible.
This is all fine and dandy provided that nothing goes wrong with your flights and for the most part, things generally don't go terribly wrong with flights. However, I think we have turned a corner as far as this industry is concerned and actual agencies are starting pop up in the developing world again and I gotta say, I very much prefer to have someone else do all the confirmation for me rather than do it myself.
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By the way if you haven't seen the travel agency skits from "Little Britain" I encourage you to look a few of them up. We probably can't have cross dressing people in skits anymore but there was a time when the world wasn't so sensitive about everything.
Things going horribly awry with booking through a website has only gone terribly wrong for me one time but it was such a bad experience that it sticks with me to this day. I had booked a flight from somewhere in Asia to New York City with an airline that I had never heard of before but the ticket cost was hundreds of dollars less than everyone else. I knew this was not going to be a pleasant flight but I am not the kind of person that passes up saving hundreds of dollars just so I can have a few extra inches of leg-room.
Well, I got to the airport bright and early that day ready to ask for my exit row only to walk up to the counter of this airline, Aerosvit, and there was nobody at the counters at all. There was no one at the sales counter either. So when I went to look at the board for departures/arrivals I found my flight and it had been cancelled. I was in no way contacted by whatever online website I used to book this flight and I wasn't contacted by Aerosvit either. So here I am, standing in an Asian airport with a connecting flight in NYC a few days later and my only choice was to pay an extortionate amount of money for a last-minute one-way flight to New York. This cost me nearly double what the round trip flight cost me with Aerosvit.
It was actually quite easy to contact that actual airline and they immediately offered to refund my money... which arrived 5 months later but that is a different story. They DID eventually give me my money back and apologized profusely for the problem. They also offered me free business class upgrades in the future but I never got around to using those because I don't find myself flying through Ukraine all that frequently.
Initially, the website that I booked through was majestically unhelpful. It was really difficult to even score a phone number to talk to a person because they are doing their very best to redirect you to an FAQ and when that fails it would direct you to a bot pretending to be a human being who isn't any more helpful than the FAQ was. At the end of the line they gave me an email address which I had to use several times before someone even responded to me. Finding a phone number to talk to an actual human being was nigh on impossible.
I think a lot of the online booking sites had this same strategy and their idea behind this is that if there is a problem, they can always pass blame onto the airline and also they seem to have a FU, Pay me, sort of attitude. They, at that time, were offering rates that would be very difficult for you to accomplish on your own or even for an agent to accomplish it as well, so if you only idea was to save money, it was a logical choice. Well, that is until something goes horribly wrong
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I honestly believe that there are very few situations that feel as forlorn as being stuck at an airport without a ticket or a plan and just sitting in what is one of the most uncomfortable places on earth trying to figure out what to do next. Well, there is a solution!
If you use an agent the responsibility of keeping track of whether or not your flight is going as planned lies on them. It is their only reason for being. When I use an agent they take my phone number and my WhatsApp or whatever and they keep me continually updated on the progress of my flight whether the information is good or bad. Should a flight get cancelled or delayed the responsibility lies on them to correct it. Travel is stressful enough without needing to be checking your email or SkyScanner every half hour to make sure your flight is still going to happen and be on time.
For me, I think that using an agent is a dead simple choice. Lately as well, as has been my recent experience, the "pleasure" of using an agent only ends up costing about $10 more than if you did it yourself as well.
So ask yourself: What is your peace of mind worth? Is it worth 10-20 dollars? I think it is and unless I have no other choice I will always use an agent unless there is no other option. As technology has improved I truly believe that they have access to avenues of booking that even the online sites do not have access to and all the agents I have used in the past are very concerned about building and maintaining their reputation. Expedia or Flights.com or whoever else seems to have a "pay us and go away" attitude and to me at least, that is reason enough for me to not use them anymore.