Chatdeal

December 19, 2023

ISSUE: Faulty ticket issued by Kayak/Chatdeal, billed asTravelOutletCash on June 12, 2023, in the amount of $16,912.40 for two business class roundtrip tickets to Bali. The name was misspelled on my husbands ticket.

Copy available. I immediately contacted the vendor but the vendor ignored me or hung up and would not correct the spelling. Email of June 13, 2023, available. Thus Delta, the domestic carrier, would not issue a boarding pass per TSA regulations on the date of flight.

RESULT:My husband could not fly to Bali on that ticket and I could not go without him.

I mitigated and bought tickets for the following day in order not to have to cancel the whole months trip. Cost: $20,186.04. Copy available.

NARRATIVE:

On June 12, 2023, I purchased two business class roundtrip tickets to Bali along with Allianz Travel Insurance with my American Express credit card. I thought I was buying tickets from Kayak, allegedly a reputable company.

Suddenly I was dealing with Chatdeal, which I had never heard of. Apparently Kayak owns Chatdeal & Allianz and is in turn owned by Booking Holdings, I have now discovered. Chatdeal has a WeWork address in NYC but appears to be outsourced to, or based in Delhi, India. I was aggressively solicited to pay for seat assignments, which I refused, and the agents ignored my calls to correct the spelling of my husbands name or hung up on me.

Reference my June 13, 2023, email confirming conversation.

His name is JOSEPH NICHOLAS BARROW but the spelling of his first name was JOSSEPH on the ticket issued by Kayak/Chatdeal.

The tickets were finally issued as follows:

Flight confirmation # G7JQJN.

Ticket # 180797****511 (Delta-Korean Air) to JOSSEPH NICHOLAS BARROW

Chatdeal - KC58AD8

Korean Air - 33AND3

Ticket # 180797****509 (Delta-Korean Air) to CONSTANCE BARROW (Me. Correct spelling)

On two occasions, referenced on email, I asked Chatdeal to change the spelling. They ignored me or hung up.

On July 13, 2023, because I was getting increasingly concerned about the tickets since I could not access them on line using any of the references Chatdeal supplied, I drove to the airport (Albuquerque Sunport ABQ) to ask a Delta agent if the tickets actually existed. I took both my husbands passport and mine along with the references Chatdeal supplied.

I was assured that the tickets existed. The Delta agent, William, printed them for me, assigned seats on the Delta (domestic) legs, and reassured me that the spelling would not be an issue for my husband. So I relaxed. Verification of incident available.

On the departure date, 9/4/2023, we presented ourselves at the Delta counter for check-in.

Photos of bags + copies of my Boarding Passes available. None for my husband. Refused because of TSA rule that the spelling had to be exactly the same as passport. The agent, George, refused to accept my husbands ticket because of the misspelling.

I called the Chatdeal number from the Delta counter but was rudely told I had to have contacted them at least two weeks earlier. (I had.) Meanwhile both the Delta agent and my husband were on the phone with Korean Air, and while the Korean Air agent was obliging and trying to make the necessary correction, it could not be done in time. Email and notes available.

At that time I also tried to buy another ticket for my husband from Delta so we could fly but by the time the Delta agent tried it was too late to fly. (Attempt to mitigate) We had no choice but to abandon that flight schedule and come home.

We bought another two tickets to try to mitigate our losses at a cost of $22,266.36. Copy available.

9/5/2023 - I called American Express, Chatdeal and Allianz Travel Insurance to report that the Chatdeal ticket could not be honored by TSA and that Delta could not issue a boarding pass because of the misspelling by Chatdeal. I reported that I had purchased two tickets from another vendor, leaving on 9/5/2023, so we would not have to cancel all the bookings we had made in Bali as well as the arrangements to cover our pet, house and yard. As it turned out, we were only one day late arriving in Bali and, though we had to abandon the first nights booking in Bali (The Open House, Jimbaran - $131.10) the rest of the trip went as planned.

10/1/2023 we returned from Bali having flown on the other tickets.

Copies available.

Price of new tickets: $22,266.36 - less $16,912.30 for tickets that could not be used = $5,354.06 Additional

Price of 2 extra Uber trips to airport - $103.50

Price of one night at The Open House, Jimbaran - $131.10.

TOTAL to be reimbursed - $22,501.95

When we returned home, October 1, 2023, I was advised to challenge the faulty ticket via American Express. I had paid for the ticket on my American Express card. The Vendor, Chatdeal, provided multiple pages of documentation including tiny print and at least one false statement. American Express accepted the vendors position, however - once, then a second time on appeal, and a third time, through arbitration.

The vendors multiple page response is available.

I then filed a claim with Allianz Travel Insurance, also owned by Kayak and ultimately, Booking Holdings. Inc. Copy available. Allianz Global Assistance denied the claim writing, on January 17, 2024, Your insurance program provided Trip Interruption benefits for very specific reasons.

Unfortunately, not being allowed to travel by the Travel Supplier due to ticket or booking issues is not included among those reasons. I have not appealed this decision as I doubt it would be useful to do so.

I have spent multiple hours and days on line trying to understand the interrelationships among all these multinational corporations and what rights a consumer might have.

In addition I have uncovered pages and pages of complaints about Chatdeal through multiple sources. I can only conclude this organization is, to understate, shady.

British Airways airline canceled my international flight from San Diego to London. As a result, I could not take my flight from London to Johannesburg and I could not take my flight from Johannesburg to Zambia.

I notified the airlines in advance of my flight. I have proof of this and chatsdeal acknowledged airline canceled my airline reservation. I provided reservation copy I was unable to use due to airline cancelation and proof airline canceled and proof that I notified the airline. The airline canceled the flights and I did not cancel.

Chatsdeal has been stonewalling me for 4 months and still not refunding me. I will be moving forward with charge card dispute in 5 days if no refund. If for some reason, I still do not get money back then I will proceed with small claims court in Virginia and suing the owners of Chatsdeal, because I opted out of the arbitration agreement within 30 days of booking. Stay away from this Chatsdeal booking site.

The service is lousy and it is designed to keep the customers' money in event that airlines cancel their flights. It is a total scam. It is honestly better to just book directly from airline.

I read their terms and conditions and it has things that are against the law in U.S. in there that would easily be thrown out in court.

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I booked a flight to New Zealand with Chatdeal via Kayak. Two weeks before my flight I noticed the name on my ticket wasn't exact (Greg instead of Gregory). I explained this to Chatdeal and they assured me a number of times it would be changed. That never happened.

The day of my flight I find out I'm not allowed to fly, must cancel my ticket and book a new one. I was assured by Chatdeal that the money for my canceled flight would be refunded if I booked another flight through them using the same airline (Air New Zealand). I did that and the only Air New Zealand flight available was Chicago to Auckland instead of San Francisco to Auckland. So I didn't get to fly with my wife and daughter. That was last April.

Chatdeal later refused to refund the money for my original flight because they claimed I didn't book through the same airline. I did and, in fact, I did so booking through them same day.

I went back and forth with them for quite some time but they wouldn't budge. I took the matter up with the NYAG and Chatdeal responded to them stating I needed to book the exact same route to get a refund! They didn't tell me that the day I was forced to rebook of course.

Chatdeal did receive a refund from Air New Zealand for the original flight. They just didn't pass that refund onto me afterwards.

To summarize, I *** hate Chatdeal. They are the worst sort of company.

I read here a lot of concerning reviews of people who had experiences similar if not worse to mine. I believe something must be done to this company, and a news story I found online is inspiring in this regard.

legalnewsline.com stories 63673****-stranded-travelers-sue-kayak-in-consumer-protection-class-action

I don't know how the company could get an average rating of 4.5 on this website where it got an average of 1 or two elsewhere.

From my experience, I would rate them 0 were there such an option.

I booked a roundtrip ticket to Ecuador. They messed up the very first step with the arrival airport for the return flight, changed it from LGA to JFK without my consent. This is a grave mistake that I have every reason to believe that is made deliberately for the purpose of scam.But unfortunately, I did not find out and point it out immediately, as they used another trick, that is, using a phantom/placeholder flight that constantly changes its departure/arrival location, but most outrageously, with seemingly exactly the same schedule(just a few minutes apart. To call it "miscommunication" is a ridiculous understatement.

Only after numerous online chat sessions and emails, agent Eileen, aka Karen from Chatdeal, squeezed a word"incovenience" in the way of apology.

And now they wanted to use the wrongly issued Eticket against me, trying to falsely accuse me of making a wrong reservation myself, or being an bad customer who would not accept nothing but " a change of flight number". Sounds familiar to anyone here?

(the above comments are newly added, below is the full story)

Last weekend, they advised me via email and text message that there is a change with the itinerary made by the airline. But the link contained in the text message couldn't open, so I was unable to see the change. Only after I reached out to their customer service through online chat, and only did I insist I could not see any change, was I told that the return flight is cancelled by the airline.

I asked for my options, possible replacement flights. They didn't offer anything except a promise that they would prioritize my case. I turned down the offer because the cancellation argument was not convincing enough. Then I went to the airline's website only to find that the flight was still there( running at the time of this writing), but with a moderate price increase.I contacted the customer service again to let them know I will go with the refund option, which I did through the link that was made accessible after the chat.

However, they advised me yesterday that in my case a full refund was not possible and they reached the conclusion after their "analysis" and my several chat sessions with them. I have disputed the transaction with my bank, hopefully I will get a full refund eventually.

This company has dishonest and even fraudulent business practices. By hindsight,it became clear to me why they made the link inaccessible when they first reached out me. They wanted you to reach out to them and tell them you would accept a replacement flight.

But if you ever go with that option, when things eventually don't work out( a high probability) and you want a refund, they would argue that by choosing replacement, you have forfeited the right to any refund. Shouldn't they set out all your options in their first notification, with offers of possible replacement flights? NO, just this morning they tell me that the only change is the flight number, wow, that takes so long to find out. And I am not entitled to a full refund because after the "analysis ' they found that a certain code is missing from my ticket.

Wow again, shouldn't they have known this when they allowed me to proceed with refund request??

(the following is newly added)

The reason why neither I nor many other agents could not find any change with the itinerary is that there is indeed no change in either departure/arrival time, nor airports( an error I failed to catch right away through my carelessness). So let's assume what they said about cancelled flight and changed flight number is true( which is not, as I was told by the airline), why did the airline bother to change a flight number while keeping every other thing in place? And suppose there is a need for such a change, how much are the chances that the changed flight has exactly the same itinerary as the one cancelled???

AvouThey are getting themselves into a rabbit hole of lies.

typical liar pants on fire situation. Pathetic yet amusing!

I bought round trip tickets to Europe through ChatDeal & they took my credit card, sent me my itinerary & then failed to book my flights. My flights to Europe went well but when I arrived at the departing airport (thankfully earlier than necessary) to fly back to the states, the flight agent informed me that I was not on the passenger manifest & that ChatDeal neglected to book me on the flight.

I missed all connecting flights & ChatDeal continues to not take responsibility. A ticket bought through a 3rd party can only be changed/rebooked by the 3rd party ticketing agent but ChatDeal agents (knowing this disclaimer) told tell me to deal with the airlines directly. American & Iberia Supervisors walked me through the 3rd party ticketing agent rules & so I went back to the responsible agent - ChatDeal. Finally several ChatDeal agents told me & emailed me that they were rebooking my flights but after 15 hours of trying to get home I was no further along.

They also told me (& emailed me) that they were refunding my money but that has yet to happen either.

I'm posting this complaint on every website in hopes of preventing this terribly handled situation from happening to anyone else. Thankfully I was travelling alone, but even that could have gone terribly wrong with the exhaustion that accompanied this ordeal.

Booked a flight on Kayak to fly Turkish Airlines from Dallas to Ljublijana and then from Budapest back to the US. Got a decent deal so approved it.

The flight was in 4 stages (Dal-Ist-Lju-Buda-Ist-Dal). Everything went smoothly. Until TA cancelled one of the flights. The Budapest to Istanbul flight was cancelled.

They said we had to go through the 3rd Party to change. The 3rd Party is ChatDeal. Went to the website to change our schedule for another flight from Budapest to Istanbul. Everything was fine.

We thought.

Turns out the website ALSO changed our departure flight from Dallas. It moved the flight to the next day. This totally screwed up our schedule. AND they charged us over $1700 as a "Change Fee".

The departure date should never have been touched. We reached out through chat to get the issue fixed. No change. Three times we got told the issue had been resolved with no change.

Eventually called and spoke with their "Customer Reps". No help. They said a manager would call the next day. No call.

Finally I spent nearly two hours on the phone and spoke with 5 different people only to eventually be told that we had approved the change so the only way to change it back would be to be charged ANOTHER fee.

Even though it was their website that had made the change, and it wasn't noticed because the flight schedule was so convoluted it was missed. But they were no help at all and their website screwed us over.

It appears ChatDeal's customer service mantra is "We already have your money, what are you going to do about it? Give us a bad review?" It's just another Indian Call Center Scam Business.

Never again going through a Third Party.