While walking to security at SeaTac airport earlier this month I witnessed an angry customer screaming at the Turkish Airlines check-in staff over the cost of checking a bag. The young man was totally in the wrong and it is a reminder that travel agents should not be trusted when it comes to your luggage limits.
Always Verify Your Baggage Policy Directly With The Airline
While I book my own flights, I operate a boutique travel concierge company specializing in the effective use of points and miles called Award Expert. Each year we help hundreds of passengers book airline tickets. I am not a travel agent, but I work with travel agents all day long and, contrary to popular opinion, there is still great value in a shrewd travel agent with knowledge about destinations or contacts at hotels.
But I also notice that some of the developing world and even the developed world still use travel agents in the very traditional sense, i.e. in booking everything through a travel agent, even simple airline tickets. And it is dealing with those agents that I offer this warning: be careful.
These are the agents who will add a “commission” to your ticket for doing what you could do in a few minutes on the airline’s website. They are also the people who may, as we’ll see below, misinform you about baggage in order to sell you a ticket, which can lead to great stress and expense later on.
Let’s return to Seattle, where a young man was enraged that Turkish Airlines wanted to charge him for his third checked bag. As a supervisor tried to explain that only two bags were included for economy class passengers, he raised his voice and held up a paper, explaining, “Look here! My travel agent says I get three bags! I won’t pay for a third bag!” The agent tried to explain that it didn’t matter what his travel agent told him. He refused to agree and finally walked away in a huff. I’m not sure what ultimately happened.
I wonder if the play is to try to get the airline to waive the extra baggage fee out of pity?
Bottom line: if you book with a travel agent, double-check the baggage policy directly with the airline to avoid unpleasant surprises at the airport. The young man was totally out of line here…but I do feel some pity for him if his travel agent misled him and he incurred an unexpected 80 USD in cost. His recourse is with his travel agent, not Turkish Airlines.
I find it hard to beleive that there are ppl who read a travel blog and don’t know something as basic as this
70% of my vistors are new each day so this is not for the regulars.
There are plenty of people new to travel blogs. It may be obvious to you as a seasoned traveler, but it isn’t to them. I learned a few “obvious” lessons the hard way when I was able to start traveling even with reading various blogs.
If you have status. Otherwise I doubt it.
I have family members that still use OTAs, I just shake my head and ask why? On some international itineraries, OTAs are cheaper and some segments can be strung together that can’t be replicated on airline’s websites. I explained the risks if anything goes wrong, then they tell me they bought travel insurance through the OTAs….I just shake my head again.
This was likely booked by a consolidator which are the shrewdest of travel agents. They specialize in travel to/from places with little knowledge or trust in the travel world, so most people book tickets through them. They have a huge amount of control over the traffic to places like SAL, GUA, etc and command nice commissions from airlines in exchange for traffic. Those passengers are also checking the most luggage and often will price out tickets based on all in cost of extra bags.
Mark, naming Cape Verde as a place they have “huge control over” is completely taken out of the part you sit on. You know, the one made of the fries you overeat.
I have flown Turkish Airlines a lot internationally and have always found them to be extra sensitive when it come to checked and cabin baggage. They are a very good airline.
Oh and I do get three bags checked due to my status but I always check the airline policy.
Are there any airlines in the world that allow three checked bags at no charge? Certainly not any that I’ve ever flown on.
AA/BA do for (intl) F class pax. They did have it for J pax too, but not currently.
It might also be possible on certain economy fare types, like for mariners, but no, not common.
Delta Medallions flying First Class do get 3 bags for free.
“A Medallion Member traveling in Delta One® or First Class can check up to 3 free bags at 70 lbs. per bag. A Medallion Member traveling domestically in Delta Premium Select can check up to 3 free bags at 70 lbs. per bag. “
You can do that with the weight concept, I have seen allowances of 30-40 kg, you can easily check 3 items inside that (in fact I usually check 2 bags under the piece concept without worrying about their weight and they rarely add up to more than 30kg).
Some specialist travel agents who deal with a lot of VFR traffic do negotiate deals with airlines which include very generous allowances.
The latest trick for OTA is booking basic economy and the person has no idea. They show up at the airport with two large bags and shocked it’s going to cost hundreds to check them.
Back in the day Expedia used to sell tickets with a Chicago connection MDW >> ORD. I used to work at an AA outstation to ORD and many people started to show up with these connections. I reminded them they needed to check bags and pick them up and then bus it to midway. Then recheck. But they only had 3 hours to do it. (There’s no way). They were shocked to find that if I fixed the connection it was 500 per person (of course it’s a family of 4) headed to Florida. I see thier price paid. It was like 250 round trip. (Still cheap at that time). The dad said if they connected via ORD it would have costed them 450 each. I’m like now it’s an extra 2k to fix it. He asked if I could just help him out and change it. I’m like no. You very much proved to me you intentionally booked it to try and get a deal. Nope. 2k or you haul bags. He ponied up his CC.
I have some sympathy for truly unsuspecting people. But after it happened many times…..I’m like it’s your fault for trusting Expedia and being greedy for a good deal without doing your homework. Pay to reissue ticket or it’s a bus for you with your bags in Chicago to MDW.
If it’s too good to be true. It probably is or you have big BUT in your ticket.
If you don’t mind my asking, if I was a normal guy who did his homework, I wouldn’t see an insurmountable problem (at least on paper.) I googled:
“How do I transfer from Midway to O Hare?
You need to take the Orange Line “L” train from Midway Airport to downtown Chicago first. Get off at the Clark/Lake station and transfer to the Blue Line “L” train heading towards O’Hare. The Blue Line will take you from Clark/Lake station directly to O’Hare Airport in around 45 – 60 minutes.Sep 27, 2023”
“If you want to travel from Midway Airport to O’Hare, there are a few transfer options you can choose from, including train which lasts around 2 hours and costs $5 – $10, shuttles that last 40 minutes and cost around $35 – $40, a taxi that lasts around 28 minutes and cost $60 – $75, or a private airport transfer via AT with a direct door-to-door service.”
Google maps shows car 50 minutes and train 80 minutes. Yes, it will be tough to get through baggage claim and check-in.
Is the problem that Expedia sold a cheap fare that didn’t have connected tickets so if they missed the other flight, they’d be bumped and not rescheduled?
Regarding the guy griping about paying for the 3rd bag. Sheesh, Turkish is UNUSUALLY generous for their economy class baggage allowance. Always loved flying with them (provided no irregular ops, of course). $80 isn’t a big deal and I’d gripe about it to the agency for not giving better disclosure.
That said, some agents are quite handy even for booking airline tickets because they get charter/wholesale fares. 25 years ago I got great deals on Swiss Air and even qualified for Silver with minimum PQFs for the time.
I just can’t believe you have hundreds of people who pay you to help them book award tickets. Maybe I’m in the wrong business.
It’s important to remember that in many parts of the world, booking via a travel agent is the only way to pay cash for a ticket on some airlines.
That is a good point though in many of those places airlines maintain city ticketing offices that take cash.
I remember city ticketing offices here in the US. They were often staffed with very experienced agents and could provide excellent assistance, usually much better than over the phone (this was pre Internet). Of course they were not convenient for everyone but I used the one in/near the Port Authority in New York many times in the late 80s. Feeling old…
United had a ticket office in Penn Station in NYC as late as 2016 or 2017.
The Penn Station UA ticketing office was a holdover from CO, and due to the fact that they had a partnership with Amtrak at the time. Toward the end it feels more like a marketing office – they were handing out free economy snacks when they introduced the new ones.
I thought ‘CTOs, now that’s a blast from the past!’, then realised that I last used one in 2022- they certainly are alive and well in Africa!
Matthew, what you witnessed does not necessarily mean you know the facts of the situation. This kid could have just made it up about the three bags in an effort to avoid the fee on that third bag. Your rush to judgement here is very unprofessional.
Of course, he could have made it up – I still would not trust a travel agent on baggage and he did blame his travel agent, so my “rush to judgment” is based on solid ground.
So you wouldn’t trust Kyle?
I surprisingly had an issue with a very well regarded TA on Flyertalk. I needed to book a complex Lufthansa itinerary which wasn’t bookable online (or perhaps was bookable but would yield no miles and thus jeopardise my *G status) and needed economy classic (1 bag included in fare plus 1 due to status). The fare code on Amadeus seemed to correspond to light (no bags in fare, no extra due to status) and not classic, but he assured me that he’d booked the correct fare.
Check in staff at CDG were adamant that I had to pay for my two bags, I did try protesting by showing the emails but couldn’t be bothered to argue, so I said ‘go ahead and charge me, I will get the TA to reimburse me’…then they discovered that they couldn’t process the credit card payment!
Legally speaking, travel agents are authorised to issue tickets on behalf of the carrier. Consequently, I am convinced that, even when a commission is charged, there’s no contract between the agent and the passenger unless it’s mandated by consumer protection legislation. I was going to ask the agent to reimburse me for the charges, but would ultimately have had to sue Lufthansa if he refused.
You denigrate an entire profession based on your second-hand observation of a stranger at an airport counter.
Did you speak to anyone directly involved in the situation?
Did you see a copy of his ticket?
I denigrate a profession based on 20 years in this business.
As a International Travel Consultant for over 45 years, I am incensed at the title of your article. It is insulting to those of us who represent our customers (and not the vendors) and handle their travel planning. When I did this in the past (I don’t do that now I am an airline dispatcher), I was careful to back up the advice I gave with information directly from the airline. Issues with baggage fees were never an issue, unless my client took more than was allowed. As I charged my clients for my service, I had a duty to get it right and if I didn’t (which was rare), I promptly refunded my fee and what they had to pay at purchase.
I do agree that if you are purchasing travel from a website that represents the vendor (Expedia, etc), you do need to verify the necessary information before you make the purchase. These sites do —not— represent the traveler and if something happens you are responsible…unless the site makes an explicit statement that turns out to be inaccurate and that error cost the traveler at the point of travel.
However, to make a general statement to “not trust your travel agent” is inflammatory and paints all of us as being incompetent. That is far from the case and to assert otherwise makes you either ignorant or worse, generating clickbait. Or both. Shame on you!