Hi all.
Apologies as I do not have much experience booking international flights. I did a search on skyscanner and found an Emirates flight at a decent price via bestjet. I then went to the Emirates sites directly and saw that it was approximately $300 more. Is this normal? And is bestjet reputable?
Thanks very much.
Thanks, yeah I'm thinking booking directly is worth the extra.
An agent works for you !!!
They will try & better or match anything online.
Much easier to contact an agent, than an airline, PLUS you can probably speak to same person.
Most agents are on some sort of commission bonus, so they have a vested interest in making sure you trip is stress free.
Airline employees don't often feel they have a vested interest in making your trip a total success.
have you spoken to your local travel agent who sells a lot of where you are going to?
If not, do it now.
Tell them exactly what you can or could get online (a price without a booking is meaningless). Prices change by the second.
An agent can make a booking & give you a day or 2 to pay.
Online you might get 20 mins tops.
I live rural, I don't think they're even open on weekends. So if I need to change something while overseas and it's the weekend am I screwed?
then you might have to phone an agent in city or nearest town or simply email your local agents.
Many agents work weekends or give out emergency numbers for when doors not open.
We would rather be woken up at 3am, if major catastrophy, then trying to sort it out at 9am, when it has got much harder to fix.
Not many people change their international flights at the very last minute. Many airlines rules, esp on cheaper fares say, you can change flights up to a certain number of days prior.
Emirates website ticket prices jump around all over the place. If you are a few days flexible with the dates, then make sure that you tick that option and you will get a grid of prices. Also, if not in an immediate hurry to buy your ticket, then check on their website daily over a couple of weeks to see if their prices are moving around. Also, since their deal with Qantas, a lot of their cheapest tickets on some destinations are actually on a Qantas flight. (Just in case this is important to you). Entertainment book members can get a small discount during certain periods of the year too for certain destinations.
Skyscanner specified which flights are Qantas and which are Emirates. Are you saying they could still be Qantas though?
Sorry to confuse. I am just talking about on the Emirates website. They will come up with a grid of their best prices for dates, but when you click on the price the flight details will come up. Then you can read if the flight is operated by Qantas or Emirates. I don't know about Skyscanner.
Before you book directly could you try price matching with Flight Centre for research purposes (and maybe save some money). Flight Centre doesn't price match the multitudes of cheap sites on SkyScanner since they're mostly foreign-owned but bestjet openly claims it is Australian owned and operated (ABN: 71 155 965 601).
Flight Centre will try to screw you for credit card fees as well I assume.
Interesting, thanks for the idea. Can you still claim FF points?
That depends on the fare bucket your ticket books into. As a general rule, the higher the fare, the higher the bucket and the more chance of points (and more points) you might get.
I may be wrong, but flight centre offer some really cheap fares that will not earn points. When you view points as a rebate for booking and flying with an airline, check if you get your moneys worth. I.e. if you get 5000 points (valued at $50 if each point is worth say, 1cent) for booking direct with emirates, but flight centre can give you the same flight $200 cheaper…
As for bestjet - always be wary of third party booking sites. If you think you might need to change your flight at any time, don't use them. Most times you will be slugged TWO sets of change fees/penalties (booking site AND then the carrier).
Flight Centre like all other agents probably has fares you can't even find via online search engines.
They are called nett fares, that is, agents get a fare at cost & add whatever they want & airlines don't take credit cards on these cos they don't know what the fare the passenger pays is.
Credit cards cost 1.5-3% generally (Diners Club maybe a bit more-not 100% sure as don't take it) + MUCH greater chance of fraud. We get vague emails from who knows every day, saying want A to B ticket & will will take a credit card via email (we just delete these)
Paypal Australia takes AMex, Visa, Mastercard & charges around 2.5% depending on turnover, for all these Australian cards (+ extra 1% for foreign cards-even they, one of the biggest banks in the world, see the extra risk when taking cards)
The other huge risk when an agent accepts a card on their own merchant a/c not airlines, is if airline goes belly up (it happens to even the biggest airlines - look at SEP11) the dodgy banks, change back to the agent.
Many agents lost their houses when Ansett fell over.
So NO agents aren't screwing you on credit card charges.
Late reply here, but Emirates charged more than I found around the internet… for exact same flights/codes etc.
Not only that, I had limited options via their site. Problems in regards to multi-city (ie: Stopover). Had to ring, to make it happen.
It is normal, for best peace of mind go direct with emirates, im not sure of the ins and outs of the pros and cons of using a reseller like bestjet, but i know there are plenty of horror stories… If you go with bestjet make sure you've got decent travel insurance (TID) so you are covered if they screw you around.