Fortunately, I had booked via my credit card company, and they finally refunded the money owed to me now… 7.5 months after the original booking, and with still no satisfactory answer, let alone excuse from Gotogate. Never ever will book through them again.
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Probably like everyone else, we booked Emirates flights in Feburary 2020 to fly to Dubai on 8th April with GTG as they were considerably cheaper. Happy days.
Obviously the flights were cancelled due to Covid-19 and we took the option of keeping the flights open instead of choosing a refund.
Fast forward to mid June and we decided to rebook our flights with our travel voucher. This was where things went downhill (like everyone else) :
Near impossible to get through to GTG on the phone (waiting times up to 2 hours) and also getting cut off mid conversation etc.
As our flights were with Emirates, we knew their open ticket policies for rebooking tickets, regardless if it was direct with Emirates OR through an agent. As long as the flights were rebooked BEFORE July 31st, no additional fees, fare difference etc should be paid.
During several frustrating calls with GTG, we were told we would have to pay 拢1000 (one thousand!) extra to rebook the flights scheduled in August. Each phone call would result in us being told varying extra costs and/or taxes would need to be paid – each time we questioned why and we were told the extra charges were coming from the airline (Emirates) not GoToGate!!
We made several calls to Emirates to see if this was false information & of course we were informed by Emirates that they do NOT charge any extra fees to either agents or direct customers.
Another excuse GTG gave was that we would have to pay a re-routing fee, as the new flights would be departing from London Heathrow, whereas our original flights were departing from London Gatwick. The change in origin departure was not our choice – it's the fact that currently Emirates are only flying from Heathrow.
Again, we contacted Emirates to confirm that we shouldn't be paying for this fee & again we got the confirmation.
Simple fact was that GTG were telling us false information regarding Emirates' policies. The problem we then faced was as much as Emirates were being very helpful, they would not contact GTG directly to inform them of their false policies. In turn GTG were telling us that we would have to get Emirates to contact them to validate the correct policy for our booking so we wouldn't have to pay the random extra fees (to be clear, everytime we called GTG, the quoted fees were different EVERY time!)
Upon further investigation with Emirates who were able to see the orginal booking on their system, we were informed that the tickets were actually issued by Global Travel Network in New Zealand.
HERE'S THE ADVICE (well done for reading this far!) :
It is likely the airline tickets you have purchased from GTG are actually issued by another agency!! When we confronted GTG, they admitted that there is an "agent desk" that is a middle man between them and Emirates when communicating. Of course this "agent desk" was Global Travel Network.
We phoned the agency in New Zealand (拢53 call for 15 minutes) and they were very helpful. After explaining the situation, they kept us in the loop via email and had contacted Emirates who in turn confirmed in writing the correct policies. (N.B. Emirates were now willing to do this as they were now communicating with an agent, not a customer).
Global Travel Network then confirmed that they would send this the GTG on our behalf.
Lo and behold we received an email the following morning from GTG saying we could rebook our tickets with no additional fees as they had been informed of the "updated" policies. Win!!
Anyway, we confirmed we wanted the new flights and begrudgingly paid the 拢30 handling fee, but by this point we just wanted it done. We recieved a confirmation email but….
….we still haven't recieved the tickets!! We can't even log onto the GTG website using the booking / order numbers – it states it does not match their records.
When logging onto the Emirates site, it recognises the new flights, but states that the agents still have to issue the tickets.
So, you guessed it – we have been on the phone constantly over the past 4 days to GTG, waiting hours, getting cut off, passed from department to department and always being told the tickets will be issued within 2 hours….and we have nothing.
The most recent call today I got a supervisor to email me stating that the company promises to issue the tickets within 24 hours else we are free to get a full refund.
I'm not going bother crossing any fingers.
Moral of this essay review – just book direct with an airline….but if you are in a similar situation, thoroughly check your booking(s) and see if it states a different agent to GTG that issued the tickets – it could help you (slightly)
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1 month later I hadn't heard anything so called back on 20th April for an update, was told it was being processed, ok.
1 month later still not heard anything so call back on 20th May, and am told that in actual fact no refund has been requested from the airline because I have apparently accepted a voucher? Completely untrue and I have an email from back in march which clearly shows that I requested money back not a voucher. The exact same thing happened to a friend who I was travelling with, so this is clearly a tactic they employ in the hope that they either buy themselves extra time or you just give up all together. When they eventually request a refund from the airline, they tell me that they cant predict how long it will be as depends entirely on how long it takes the airline to refund them, but that once they get the money back from the airline they will send me it within a couple of weeks.
One week after this I receive an email from the airline to say they have refunded the agent, i.e. gotogate. I waited a couple of weeks and then rang gotogate for an update. They tell me they're still processing the refund.
Another 3 weeks later ive just rang back again and same answer They've had the money from the airline for over a month now. This is clearly another tactic to delay or hope people forget. How many times will I have to ring up? Understand the situation that the airline industry is going through, but have already had refunds back from other flights I had booked direct with the airline in a much more organised and timely manner. I have learnt my advice to never book through an agent again and would advise others to do the same.
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Our return flights from Bangkok were cancelled firstly by gotogate who after lots of ignored correspondents eventually sent a conformation that this cancellation was correct and they would send us a full refund as soon as they received from Air China. We also received some emails from Air China with flight alterations an eventually conformation of cancellation, it also stated it had given Gotogate the go ahead to refund us, the conformation code was included. Its now been 6 weeks and having no refund contacted there customer service (customercare at support.uk.gotogate.com ) This is their reply;
'With reference to your email we would like to inform you that refund is not possible airline has already declined your refund request as booking is no show hence refund is not possible. Kindly contact to airline directly if you have any other query regarding refund.
Kind regards,
Gambhir S, Customer Service Gotogate'
We did manage to purchase return flights with another company and got home on 8th March. These however cost us over twice as much as the refund that is due to us.
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