Some People Give Travel Agents A Bad Name

It make me really mad when these large online agencies that undercut the travel agents just to make a quick sale without providing any additional services.  This leaves the client possible on clueless on what to do in the ports, what goes on during a cruise, what do you need to do before you leave on a cruise, or any other questions that come up.  After you save a couple of bucks with these agencies, they try to charge you to ask any questions because you are taking away from their call center sales.

What makes me even more mad is when these agencies steal from people and then go out of business to get away from all the problems they caused.  Take in point the most recent example Ecruisestore.com which went out of business last week.  Ecruisestore was taking credit card payments for vacations themselves and in most cases not passing the payment onto the supplier for the vacation.  This kind of tactic is wrong and has left a lot of people who thought they had their dream vacation with nothing but a charge on their credit card.  I feel bad for these people because a lot of them take a lot a time, effort, and money to make a vacation happen.  Now these people have to scramble to fix the problems this agency has made.

I want to give anyone who is reading this one tip when booking a vacation with a travel agent.  Make sure the agent is charging your credit directly with the cruise line or supplier and not taking the payment themselves.  What I always tell clients is that they can go on the travel suppliers website right after they get off the phone and see their reservation their with their payment.  If you can't see that, then that is a big red flag and should be handled with your travel agent right away.