Personal experience: why it is dangerous to buy tickets on intermediary sites

Political scientist Alexander Kynev complained on his blog about the more than strange behavior of the employees of the well-known intermediary website for the sale of air tickets Tickets.ru:

“Colleagues - a question for lawyers, who could help draw up a corresponding complaint to law enforcement agencies. In April I flew to Nepal. Initially, I was supposed to fly by Turkish Airlines through Istanbul, but since April 14, air traffic with Turkey was closed and my tickets were canceled. I ended up buying other tickets and flying via Dubai.

However, since the ticket was bought not through the #turkishairlines website, but through the #Ticketsru intermediary website, the refund, according to the airline, had to go through tickets ru. Initially, they told me that they had sent a refund request to the airline: “Dear customer!

According to your request for a refund, the seats in the order have been canceled. Our agency, as an intermediary between the client and the airline, initiates the refund process by completing all the necessary documents and submitting a request to the corresponding representative of the carrier, which will make the final decision on the amount of the refund amount. Since refunds need to be agreed with the airline, it may take 1 to 3 months to process and refund. Such requests are considered on a first come, first served basis".

4 months have passed, no one has returned anything. According to Turkish Airlines, the money was returned to the agency long ago, but it is now writing such letters in response that contradict the original ones: "Since the ticket was paid directly to the airline, the airline also returns the funds. Accordingly, the refund is made without our participation. have received a request to contact the airline directly to clarify more detailed information. " Obviously, they just pocketed the money and do not want to return it to the client. It is impossible to get through to them, any waiting on the phone is reset after 10 minutes. I think it is a matter of principle to punish these swindlers from #tickets.ru.All correspondence and all answers are saved, as are ticket prints. But I am not a lawyer and I do not know how to draw up and submit such complaints - what is needed is not advice, but practical help in writing and filing a complaint..."

From the comments of readers, it became clear that this behavior of Tickets.ru employees is the norm:

- Read their page! There are a lot of the same complaints. Under each of their posts, there is just a wave of angry complaints! Damn yourself, scammers!

- My situation is similar, but it seems a little different. Tickets.ru accepted the cancellation request, then notified that it was waiting for a return from the company, then, attention! notified that "The request for a refund has been forwarded to the finance department. But it will not be made before the airline refunds the funds to the account of our agency" and finally changed the status in the personal account to "the request has been processed, the funds have been sent to the payer." But no funds were returned to the account. And it is also unclear how to contact them in order to find out when and where they allegedly "sent" funds. When switching to an employee, the phone after the robot does not lead to any employee.

- Oh, I finally found a comrade in misfortune! Tickets ru cheaters tortured me for a month and a half in a similar situation. It was easier for me. The airline sent me a copy of the document on the transfer of my money to them. But how they mocked me. There is simply no place to describe it! The money was returned. But now I just don't want to know them. Never again, as they say!

However, it seems that this situation either arose or worsened during the pandemic. As one reader explained:

“The intermediaries are ALWAYS cheaper. Moreover, often by 10% or more. When you buy tickets for several hundred thousand rubles, there is a decent difference. Before the pandemic, everything was fine, everything worked well. But now it seems that the main business of intermediaries is to receive their commission even if the flight is canceled. Previously, when canceled, the full amount was refunded. Now they spin your money for a couple of months under the pretext of a large traffic of returns, and then they also return an incomplete amount "minus the agency fee" ... "

In addition, intermediaries behave differently, there are also quite conscientious ones:

“It all depends on the impudence of the mediator. I had a round trip ticket. She flew there, and the return flight was canceled. So the intermediary from whom I bought the ticket returned the amount I received from me, i.e. for both flights, although one was used by me..."

Well, many advised the author to solve this problem in another way - by contacting the bank through which the payment was made:

“This is how we tried to get the money back from Scandinavian Airlines. They did not refuse to return, but each time they said, wait a little, we have a collapse, we will return the money. When 7 months passed, I called our bank, which card we used to pay for the tickets. They have the option "paid, but not received services (goods). The bank returned the money to us within a few minutes, and they already dealt with Scandinavian Airlines themselves. Then we received several letters from them that the money was returned to us..."