I’m just going to make it simple and tell you stories, and what I learned. I’ll make it a quick and easy read since you are probably stressed with planning. It's not just about flights, and it's not always the website itself that is the problem.

For our wedding night in 2019 I found a beautiful hotel room. It was a king suite with a gorgeous view of downtown, a soaking tub, waterfall shower head, a huge fluffy bed, robes.. the whole 9 yards. I booked it through Expedia which I had never had problems with before when purchasing airline tickets. For this example only, I won’t fault Expedia as much as the Hotel, but still. On your wedding night, this is definitely not the vibe. So we get there a little after midnight, I’m sick with the flu I have a headache and I’m just 100% ready for bed. The two people at the front desk chatting about their social lives didn’t even acknowledge us at first when we came through the door in full wedding attire. When they finally did help us they helped us up to a standard room with two queen beds. I told the person who walked us up that this was definitely not what I booked. About an hour later of walking around arguing with staff while still in my wedding dress and running a fever they did finally give me the room that I paid for. The reason this story is relevant to this post is that I didn’t know that there was a clause when booking through a third party site that meant you only pay for the value of a room at the establishment and they only have to give you one that they see as being worth the same price tag. Does not have to be at all similar to the one you thought you were booking.

The second experience came this summer when booking our flights to Europe through Bravofly. I didn’t read the reviews beforehand, so let me warn you now that if you have to make any cancelations or alterations to your itinerary Bravofly is supposedly not helpful and does not give refunds. Our personal experience with them was that we paid for premium economy tickets – nothing fancy, just wanted a carry-on and to ensure we were sat together. Well, they charged us for premium economy, but booked us basic economy through the airline. Now at this point we’ve already taken carry-ons on the first leg of our flight and I’m not wanting to pay for 2 extra checked bags. While arguing with the airline I found out there is no guarantee or sympathy if you purchase through a third-party site. According to every single United Airlines and Lufthansa employee I spoke with, they could not accommodate anyone or anything that didn’t book directly through them.

My third story is a little scarier. Last minute we decided to change our flights to Greece on our European adventure. I only found one airline that worked with our other flights, and I booked through Trip.com This change cost me almost $2,000. I was relieved to have the tickets, so I went about my business planning. The morning of our flight to Europe I see that Trip.com says they couldn’t get me seats on the flight. I thought that when they took my money out of my bank account - that meant that I had a seat on the flight, but apparently that is not how Trip.com works. I called my mom and we were trying to figure out what to do. I called their customer service and told them that if they can’t get me a flight I need them to refund my money so that I can book through somewhere else because I left that day and needed my connection to Greece. After that phone call my mom tells me that this is their reputation. They say they can’t book the flight after your payment goes through and wait for you to call and cancel because they have in their terms and conditions that if you cancel they don’t owe you a refund. I was terrified. I was out so much money and so stressed. It ended up working out okay and my refund went through, but it was 100% not worth the headache. I ended up finding the same flights through the airline directly for just like $10 more and was able to continue my trip as planned. I didn’t receive the refund until we had already returned home, so I was pretty stressed the whole time we were there. I don’t suggest it at all.

I think overall my conclusion is that I don’t necessarily think that all third-party sites are terrible, but I do think that the corporations who exploit the use of third party sites to force their customers to book directly through them are the problem. Until there is a fix for that, I’m warning all my fellow travelers to beware of third party booking because it can cause some major hiccups with airlines and hotels you plan to use on your trip.

Happy Wandering! Do you have any third party website horror stories? Leave them in the comments!