Recourse for travel agency error?

1 points by mxuribe ↗ HN
If I paid a travel agency in full for a week's hotel stay, and then travel agency comes back stating they messed up on original price, should I have to pay "new" price? Or should they honor the original price?

Here's the situation: my brother is getting married in August in Mexico (destination wedding thing), and he used a travel agent for setting up the room block package, etc. But I didn't reserve hotel before the group rate expired. Fine, no problem: I paid the higher amount without question; paid in full with credit card. Nearly a week after i paid, i get a call from said travel agency stating they messed up, and the person who booked my trip gave the wrong info, etc. (And this is after my card got charged, and i received electronic receipt.) I've been hassling with this travel agency because they don't want to honor the price that I paid, citing that they know its their error, but "they can't do anything about this", and i have to pay an even higher hotel room amount. It sounds fishy to me at worst, and negligent at best. Besides the obvious full refund, do i have any recourse here? (And, yes, i know travel agencies suck in general, but was going along with what my bro had set up.) Any suggestions, or should I just give up and get refund???

2 comments

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First step would be to call the hotel to verify / check to see if the reservation exists for you. Depending on if they used their card or yours, you might be able to possibly grab it by making sure the contact information/authorizations on it is for you. This is risky especially if they didn't use your card for the reservation because they could get mad and try to cancel it if you refuse to pay more.

You could try to contact the hotel directly and see if you can appeal to someone to get you a deal. If the prices are similar to the new quote from the travel agent, if it were I, I would just tell the travel agent to stuff it and book directly.

If the wedding is something beachy, note that August is in the middle of hurricane season. Travel insurance is something you might want to consider too.

Great advice, thanks so much!