It is good to be wary, but sometimes you need to move forward. I have been burned by online travel deals in the past so I was leery of booking my own flights through an unknown small agency, who said that they specialize in missionary discounted flights - www.economytravel.com . I checked them out by searching for scams associated with them. I came up empty. That was great, as the price they quoted me was almost half of what the cheapest online quote I could get from all the big agencies.
The lady I dealt with was very professional and friendly, and I did not feel there was any cause for concern, but as the time came to pay for the tickets, I found it harder and harder to do it with peace in my heart. SO I decided to try checking up on them more thoroughly. I phoned Better Business Bureau, they had not heard of them. Economy Travel had a symbol on the bottom of their web page, IATA, so I phoned them after finding out they are a registry for travel agencies. They searched for a bit, and then assured me that they were legit. They gave me the company address, but it was different than the one on Economy's web page, so now I was concerned again. I phoned my travel agent, she assured me they were legit and had moved recently. She told me to phone British Airways, and walked me through some steps that showed that my trips were registered...but then came bad news. Our flights have been canceled.
I was supposed to have paid for the flights four days ago, but we were still waiting for a few things to fall into place, so I was going to pay for them today. Well, British Airways got impatient and canceled the booking. She searched for seats again, and the price went up for the same dates - $200 per person.
ON Monday, I will be paying unless I get cold feet again. I pray that God grants wisdom in this and that perhaps we can get back to the lower price again. God answers prayer, as we have experienced in the last few weeks, so I trust he will help us in this fun stuff of navigating the airways! :)
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