I put a search into Skyscanner for flights from Melbourne to Hamilton Island and au.mytrip.com had the cheapest direct virgin australia fares. Has anybody used au.mytrip.com to buy a domestic flight? It's a bit cheaper than booking with Virgin Australia. Should I risk booking with them? Thanks
IWTF often links to mytrip.
If you go to the very final page of ordering then check the final price.
Some sites, like edreams, show a cheaper fare but only add on their fees at the very last stage.
One site in particular does not show its fees until you select payment type and only then is the total/real price shown (i.e. more expenaive than elsewhere). It is very easy to miss this add-on. Almost fraudulent, as through out the checkout process it states "only pay this amount $xx.xx" and then BAM at the last moment tack on admin fees.
Ive booked many times with a third party companies. Always call the airline shortly after booking to confirm they have the booking.
You wont have any problems unless you need to cancel or reschedule the flight! Then it becomes complicated…
I think the other thing I see in reviews is issues when mytrip changes/cancels the flight. I'm sure mytrip blame it on the airline but somehow I think if you book direct with the airline this happens far less often.
I am having major issues with my trip. They won't provide me refund!!! Air NZ is saying Mytrip has my money! They only respond via auto email and never accessible!
Mytrip is part of a reasonably large global group of travel companies including Bravofly and lastminute.com, so is not a scam from that perspective, BUT:
- as with most airlines, you largely lose the ability to talk to the airline direct in the event of reschedules and cancellations when you go through an agent
- you can pretty much write off any possibility of cancelling or changing your flight voluntarily (i.e. the flight's operating normally but you want to make a change), as the costs for doing this are extraordinarily high
- they do have contact numbers on their website but the numbers themselves seem to be disconnected - if you think you might need this in the future, you should double check this
- there's no real email address to reach them on it seems, so you have to go via livechat. Their livechat function is responsive but agents are generally pretty clueless and really just note takers, so you end up having to wait for days on end for proper responses (and those proper responses sometimes ignore what you actually asked for)
- if the airline does cancel or reschedule a flight and it doesn't work for you and you want a refund, they will apply a rather high administrative/handling charge on the refund, so you will not receive 100% back
- if you do need a refund, it'll likely take longer than if you booked direct
- depending on how you get to their website (through a search engine, comparison website, etc), the card surcharges they apply can be different - in my experience, they'll offer at least one card type that allows you to get the quoted price, but it can sometimes be by using some obscure card like Diners. I think they get around the credit card surcharge discrimination thing by offering different "discount amounts" for using each card.
So if your flight is coming up reasonably soon and/or there's no likelihood of you needing to cancel or change, and you don't mind patiently negotiating any changes that might be required, then they're good, as they're quite often the cheapest option on comparison websites.
How much cheaper? I’ve never booked flights with any third party. I don’t trust it. But I’m sure people do.