Review of Cheapoair.Com: Such a Rip Off it Should Be Called Cheatoair.Com

I needed a ticket overseas. Not hard to come by; for a hefty price. However, what is increasingly hard to find is cheap or even reasonable airfare. The two-way ticket screws everyone does it not? I need the ticket, so I do what any good traveler does, I shop around. The days of calling up the airline directly died when I was a small child with the birth of the net and all its wonderful services, so that was not a worry. What I did have to worry about was combing the net not only for the best price, but for any site selling tickets at all.

You see, I'm fairly new at the practice of buying my own plane tickets. I was well aware of the popular sites: Travelocity, William Shatner Negotiations & Co. While I made sure to check these well known sites, I could not help but think they did not offer the best price simply because they could very well be operating on the hope that people will buy from them because they're well known rather than be good travelers and shop around for the lowest price. Mouthful. I scoped the Orbitzes, the Pricelines...so on and came up disappointed; I wasn't getting to where I was going for much less than $1200 dollars. Not cool. I'm not a millionaire yet (my stimulus check is lost in the mail) so I still have to watch what I spend to an extent.

After a lot of digging around on Google, that is to say typing in the search bar and trying every site they offer in response to my "cheap plane tickets" search criterion, I was filled with glee. I'd found the site for me. Pointless drum roll. Cheapoair.com. Wicked cheap prices. I found a ticket to my destination, overseas to Asia for $484 dollars. Wow! What a crazy deal. Too good to be true, sir. You're right! Let me warn you preemptively. My review in summation is this: Do not buy from them. Okay, back on task. Why? Why not buy from these cheap ticket offering sons of guns? Here's why in story form.

I find the ticket on February 21, 2009 for $750 dollars. I think, alright in comparison to Shatner and Friends, this is a darn good price. I accept. Enter the old card number and hit submit. Thanks a pant-load soon to be happy and satisfied customer! Your confirmation email is on its way! I check my inbox and there is my confirmation email with my receipt and travel info, flight number etc. At the bottom of the message it says something about the ticket being non-refundable and non-transferable or some such junk. Don't care, not interested. I'm pleased. I shut off the computer and sleep well knowing I found a website that is a diamond in the rough and got one hell of a price. Oh my goodness were my troubles just beginning. Thinking back, I should have done a customer review search on the company before acting. I didn't, which is why I'm writing this blurb.

Alright, I wake up the next day. That's February 22, 2009 for those who are counting. By that evening I get a weird feeling in my guts about the ticket. I pull open the lid of my laptop (which I call the screen writing machine...not really) and go back to cheapoair.com. I re-enter my flight info: my departure dates the airports all that necessary information and click the search button. What do I come up with? Much to my dismay I find the same ticket has now dropped from $750 to $484 in less than twelve hours. I was livid to say the least. I click on the "contact" link and bring up the companies number. I'm keeping in mind the ticket is non-refundable and non-transferable (damn email) but I figure I might as well try to get the ticket switched. Can't hurt. If I plead my case and tell them I bought this thing less than twelve hours ago and now the price is dropped maybe they'll feel bad and agree to change the flight for me. So I call them up and wow are those customer service lines busy (now I see why...filled with customers wanting to complain). I put the phone down and waited on hold for roughly 1.5 hours.

I had my suspicions this company had outsourced to a silly little country where the people spoke bad conversational English. Boy was I right! At long last I get on the horn with "Ryan," your typical all-American good looking surfer dude. I explain my story to Ry' and after another pain-staking, grueling 1.5 hours (literally) made up of being put on hold and having to re-explain my situation I was indeed able to have my plane ticket switched to the "cheaper" price....for a nominal fee. I am finally able to hang up with the Ry' man and then once again I go to sleep feeling I'd hit the big time. Gosh, how did I ever get so lucky? At this point a sane person might ask, what happened to my intuition? It's broken.

Okay, to clarify, essentially what has happened up to this point is my original plane ticket of $750 was canceled. The charge for this is $150 dollars. Not a big deal because I'm still saving a lot of money. I am then able to rebook my flight for the $484. My total cost now is $634. It is worthy to note and remember that I confirmed the final price with Rylan six times. Each time, he said "yes that is correct." So, who was to think something was not right?

A few days pass and I don't suspect much until I get my credit card statement. I see the charges are way more than they should be, more than the price of the original ticket. Finally, my brain sends up a red flag. I call the billing department of this company and they give me the run around. "That's just our policy. It's correct. What else can I help you with?" What is your policy? Lying about a price and then charging people more than they paid originally? I'm in the wrong business. I wonder if they're hiring. So, after about thirty minutes of being transferred and arguing with the woman in the billing department (it was like pulling teeth) I finally get out of her that these extra charges that add up to more than the ticket itself are hidden charges they didn't tell me about. If that wasn't bad enough, these charges aren't even listed in the fine print anywhere on the website and they refused to do anything about it. This woman claimed she had no supervisor and that nothing could be done. Essentially I'd been f-ed at the drive through.

I canceled the ticket. Lesson learned. Go with the big companies who have a reputable track record.
In summation once more, do not buy from this company. They lie. They cheat. They steal. They mislead and they direct you to people who cannot help you. I hope this review reaches people before they find cheapoair and get into the mess I got into. Happy travels.