CheapOair
Reviews and Complaints

These folks made an error. Didn't contact me until almost 1 year later. Instead of calling and stating the problem, their representative phoned me Xmas Eve and launched into a diatribe about how wrong I was. I was phoned and before I hung up they sent an email also. I replied that I would get copies of my credit card statement and with Xmas being that Friday, I didn't call for copies until the following Monday, when their rep. called me and launched into another tirade about how much money I owed them. I said not to call again until I had time to get the info. and hung up. He called me back over and over and over again (approx. 10 times as fast as I hung up he called back!) I will never use these folks again. Save yourself. . .use anyone but Cheapo Air!

I purchased a ticket with CheapOAir in December 2008. I was unable to use the ticket due to a death and had to cancel my travel plans. Upon trying to make a new reservation (willing to pay penalty) I was told the ticket was not valid.

After calling customer service for two days (on hold for one and one half hours the first day) and talking to two customer service representatives: Angelo and Travis who sounded suspeciously the same, I was told by Angelo the reservation did not exist. Travis told me that I couldn't speak to a manager because they were busy with other customers. This I attributed to their training and desire to get rid of me.

I can truly say, CheapOAir has lost a great customer as I will direct my friends, family, and associates to airlines directly or other airline search engines due to CheapOAir not handling customer concerns in a business-like manner.

If you don't like how a company treats you...treat them to a new reality of you being someone else's customer.

I book an international ticket on Cheapoair abouth 5 months ago. When I had to cancel my flight, after HOURS of being on the phone, I was able to get a credit for an amount of $2k. My original ticket paid was over $2.3K. Not only did they charge me a $50 cancellation fee, they also did not refund part of the ticket b/c they claimed it was the "tax" portion and cannot be refunded back to me.

Today when I did my rebooking with my $2K credit, they told me I have to paid $200 in penalty fee as well as the fare differnce. Turns out that the fare difference is over $300. How is that possible when the exact flight online on Kayak is only $1.5K. That means they are OVER CHARGING me $800 on this transaction. I had to accept the fee b/c I have a credit on it and want to use it so that I do not have to deal with this company ever again. Their corporate structure is very mal-aligned. PLEASE AVOID.

There are times when the airline will not honor a fare after it has been booked, or they come back with an alternate price. Cheapoair tires very hard to confirm the original cost, but at times we are unable. The complaint is regarding a higher fare, it appears that the 2nd airline quote was valid, for he mentions he went to American Airlines directly and they paid $50.00 less, that is because Cheapoair.com charges a $25.00 per person service fee.

So in essence, we did not make up a fare of $400.00 more, because it seems the blogger actually paid this much with the airline directly!

I am still fighting for the money which is rightfully mine and would like to discourage others from purchasing airline tickets from this fraudulent company. I've tried speaking with several people at cheapoair.com, tried filing a dispute with my credit card company that I purchased the tickets with and the insurance company that I bought along with the ticket to no avail.

I purchased my roundtrip plane ticket on April 3rd, 2008 for the amount of $817.57. The tickets which I purchased over 9 months before my flight was scheduled to leave were in fact non-refundable. I was well aware of this at the time of purchase and I wouldn't need a refund now if Cheapoair had kept their part of the bargain. I never anticipated that once I purchased the tickets, I would be unable to use them due to negligence from Cheapoair themselves.

On November 30th, 2008, I received a very vague e-mail stating that my itinerary had changed and "depending on the extent of the changes an alternate flight or a refund may be possible" .The e-mail also asked for me to call Cheapoair, which I did. I spoke to several people there and was placed on hold for several minutes, numerous times. No one at Cheapoair was able to give me a written description of the changes in my itinerary, nor any proposals for a new itinerary. I took it upon myself to call one of the airlines who were able to tell me that my tickets were no longer valid since the airlines had changed their departure and arrival times significantly. They also informed me that Cheapoair alone, would be able to re-book my flight and that I would need to call them to do so. My futile attempts to receive some sort of new itinerary or a refund, continued all the way up until my scheduled departure date of December 17th 2008. Needless to say, I was forced to pay for new tickets from another airline which were even more expensive than the tickets I purchased from Cheapoair due to how late I was booking my new flight.

After I had already purchased the new tickets, I was told by a gentleman named Nigel Slate, that I would be able to receive a refund. He appeared as if he was sincerely trying to help me, but would not give any manager's contact information. He only stated that he would "escalate [my] booking to [his] senior manager to get in touch with [me]". He also gave me a general e-mail address which was: feedback AT cheapoair.com and assured me that if I wrote to that e-mail address it would go to "senior most management". However, this was the same e-mail address that I had been using almost daily since November 30th. I did e-mail it though, and as expected, I never received a response nor did Nigel's manager contact me as promised.

To this day, I am still fighting to get my money back and have no written itinerary from my prior booking. I have been communicating with a woman by the name of Anna Farewell. The number that I have for her is: #212... She assured me that she would help me with this situation, yet never returns my phone calls. I received a letter from her recently stating that she would give me a voucher for a domestic flight using Air Tran lines that would expire by December. I kindly declined this preposterous offer, since, not only is that flight no where NEAR equivalent to the tickets I purchased over a year ago, but I will hopefully be moving to the U.K. by the end of the year to be with my cancer stricken fiance' and will have no need for a domestic ticket.

Cheapoair should not be running a business at all and I am sure that I am not the only customer that is in this situation. Several weeks after Cheapoair was aware that my itinerary was no longer valid, I continued to see the same tickets for sale online. Their customer service is a joke and I cannot believe that I have had to deal with such a nightmare in the midst of my fiance' being diagnosed with cancer for a second time.I've wasted several unfruitful hours on the telephone, filing claims, and writing letters in attempt to retrieve my money from Cheapoair. I've tried being cordial and friendly and then of course, I tried being the highly irritated customer. The conclusion that I have come to is that: cheapoair doesn't care about their customers- They already have their money from me. Everyone needs to hear my story and I will ensure that they do.

Watch out for Cheapoair. I booked airline tickets and decided to add car rental. Found out I don't need car rental as my company will pick us up and cancelled only to find out there is a $25.00 cancellation fee for supposedly the car rental place holding car for us! This was week before we left, they don't hold cars for anyone. I travel for business and pleasure every month and have never paid fee for car rental or hotel. Also a few days after we booked the price of the airlines tickets went down by $500.00, I notice we won't get that rate, but if rate goes up some people have been charges. Watch out for this!

I wanted to fly to Budapest from my conference in Italy. I booked tickets on Cheapoair (I should have looked at this board, first!) First of all, they gave me the wrong reservation. I requested a reservation on Sept 10 and they gave me reservations for August 14th. I called to cancel. An agent with a thick accent said that it was no problem that they would change the reservations to the originally desired dates. First, could I give another account number to them because they were having a bit of trouble with the other card that I gave them? No, they were not going to charge the other one. Well, I should have known better. They ended up charging both cards for $180.00 dollars each. I called up to see if they could refund/cancel one of the bookings/charges. They just kept repeating that the charge was non-refundable. I told them that I do not have any other options than to report the charges as fraud in that case. After reading some horrible things about them, I am receiving new charge cards from my bank. Be sure to read the person's story about multiple charges!

Please do yourself a favor, try Travelocity or Cheaptickets. Anything other than this company!

I came from Korea and stay in Seattle as a visiting scholar of University of Washington. But my life in America is very unhappy because of vicious companies like CheapOair.com.

Twice CheapOair.com intend to swindle me and earn excessive profits. In the case of reservations and changing schedule by phone, CheapOair.com staff lies and swindles customers.
Inspite of being available, CheapOair.com staff claimed that there is no alternative flight ticket.
Inspite of there being cheaper tickets they claimed the cheaper ticket was sold out and only expensive tickets remained.
Though I said that I am seeing the company's internet site and can buy the cheaper ticket, they answered that the ticket was sold.
So I sent an email to the director of Customer Service of CheapOair.com but I have not received an answer even after a week.

I think that CheapOair.com swindles customers and earns excessive profits. This is not only me but also all of their customers.

So I request your government to investigate CheapOair.com's swindling and earning excessive profits.

Please don't make me to be disappointed with your country because of this vicious company CheapOair.com.

Purchased a ticket for a 'Major Airline' (actual airline name hidden until booking) because the site guaranteed a full guarantee if you are not satisfied with the airline. It will be a member of the Star, SkyTeam or Oneworld alliances.

Upon booking, I found out the airline was Spirit, which is neither a major airline nor a member of any of those alliances. Had to spend 45 minutes on the phone and actually had to send SCREENSHOTS of their stated policy to [protected]@cheapoair.com because the guy refused to acknowledge the refund policy.

I had to deal with this guy: [protected]@cheapoair.com

Cheapoair is a ripoff!
I tried to purchase a ticket and my debit card was declined. Ok, no big deal.
2 days later I had a fee debited from my account from cheapoair for $24! I emailed and called cheapoair to get a refund, afterall my card was declined!
The staff was very rude and kept putting me on hold to talk to someone else.
I emailed the company and they said it was required fees. Im glad they can still debit from an account even though the card was declined. That is really nice of them! I will never use this website again!

I booked a one way flight for my husband. He had an early morning flight. When he arrived at the airport he was told that his ticket had been cancelled by CheapOAir. He called CheapOAir and was told that the offer had expired. I had booked the flight over a week prior. They had sent an e-mail at 5:00 am the morning of his flight to notify him. However, they did have another flight that was almost twice as much and required him to stay overnight. The flight was still being offered through Expedia for about $10.00 more. Absolutely ridiculous! The customer services was extremely poor and they only offered the more expensive flight with the layover. I confronted the customer service person about the bait and switch and that this sounds like a scam. She didn't deny it. She was just quiet and restated there offer.

After I purchased a round trip ticket from cheapoair.com via Continental airline to Asia on January 5. Within a few hours later, I found out the price had dropped $74.00 for the exact same itinerary. I called the customer service and talked to many representatives regarding the price drop and wish to be credited the differences (as other reputable web agencies allow customers to cancel without penalty within 24~48 hours); I was treated as a pest and was refused of my request.

I was wondering of my treatment by those nasty customer service representatives since I had read as many reviews as I could on their website before I purchased my ticket, and could not find any negative one. So, I intended to post my bad experience of their horrible customer service and cheapoair.com unfair business practice on their customer reviews board. But it was never appeared on their reviews board. Instead, Renee Andrews contacted me via email. After a whole day of back and forth emailing, they finally agreed to credit $65.00 out of $74.00 back to my AMEX. Don't ask me why, but it's better than nothing.

A few days later, I checked my reservation on the Continental Airline's website and found out the cost of my trip was only $1320.30 ($1232.00 + $88.30 taxes and fees). But cheapoair charged me $1344.30 and another $124.00 taxes and fees (?) on my American Express credit card. That means, cheapoair charged me $148.00 for their commission on my ticket. I have never heard of such a big commission profit from an airline web agency. The normal commission for a travel agency is around $20~$25.00 per round trip ticket.

My conclusion on this cheapoair.com is that it is a many fraudulent facets traveling web agency. Buyers beware! Stay far far away for your pocket and good health!

I had bought a ticket for myself, daughter and son to fly to Morocco from Rome. Everything was fine until 1 week before my flight, they sent an email stating the air lines has changed the time and dates. So I called them to check the times and dates. They gave me the changes of the dates after being on hold for 30 mins. My departure date was a big change, instead of 2 hour lay over I had to wait 26 hours. So they did give me an opition to have a refund. I had explained my account was closed so a refund was not opition unless someother way could be worked out. Again, after being on hold for 30 mins. was hung up on twice, I was told, could reschedule the flight a different date but would have to wait to talk with the air lines, they would call me back the next day. The day of my orginal date I called the air lines to find out what is going on since I had not heard from Cheapoair. Well the air lines still had my reservation and could board if I wanted since Cheapoair never cancled the reservation. The air lines told me they would probably give me the run around but demmand to get a different flight, and they would work out some kind of refund if that was my discussion but Cheapoair would have to do the change. I talked to 4 people, got told why did I closed my account if I haven't flied yet. I told her how dare she, and wanted to talk to someone else, she told me no! I told her she was very unprofessonial and who dare she. She called me the B word. I finnally talked to someone in the buisness department and that lady won't even let me talk, she just kept on talking about no refund just through orginal bank, and the credit would go through even if closed, I would have to get the money through the bank. She won't even let me talk or explain about the opition of rebooking. I placed the phone down, went to the bathroom and she was still talking! I will never get my money back, I am not going anywhere, the only thing I got was sore ears from being on hold every time I called. Big ripoff company, don't use!

Fareportal, inc. Dba cheapoair.com writes bad checks

On may 21 2009, after much pressure was put on sheilesh (Sam) jain, ceo of cheapoair.com, to return my money, I received check # 10049, drawn on capitalone bank, in the amount of $4, 226.00. But when I went to the bank to cash it, the teller informed me the funds were not available. The teller attempted to call cheapoair but no one would pick up the phone.

I am unable to cash my check. Do the airlines and hotels know what kind of company this is?

Daniel b.

Cheapoair is the biggest fraud company ever, located in 213 west 35 th street ny and farmingo street las evvegas, this company nvr cares about wt people might think of this rip off, fraud charges, wrong ticket amount, and may more, this all in one scrap company, beware guys dnt ever purchase tickets from cheapoair or onetravel.

Cheapoair hotel sales when checking out states "All taxes and fees are included" so I thought ok great. It wasn't until I was at the hotel that I was getting charged $300 MORE than my reservation for taxes that Cheapoair had misquoted me on. Although they had said that they were INCLUDED. Ultimately cheapoair took no blame saying it does say all taxes are included BUT there is also some tiny hidden writing in the "terms and conditions" link that states that there are taxes and other fees that can not be predicted. Although two truths were listed, the one that was hidden away in tiny script was the actual rule and they weren't responsible for the EXTRA $300 I was charged! I say ### and so scheisty!

In November 2008 I made a reservation for a hotel close to SFO airport. Immediately after that I called the customer service to change the date of the reservation. This time a lady answered the call very quickly and promised that there was no increase in fees if the date was changed. What she did was canceling the original reservation and making a new one. She also promised that the $411 for the original reservation would be fully refunded soon.

After a while, in December 2008, I found that only $359 was credited back to my card. I called again, and the customer service kept me waiting for 40 minutes. Finally a guy answered the call and promised that the remaining $52 would be fully refunded. They just needed more time.

3 months passed. My credit card was going to expire and I still saw nothing from cheapoair. I called again and again. They had various excuses to reject me. Sometimes they said there was no one in charge of refunding, sometimes they promised to call me back later but I got nothing, or they just kept me listening to the commercials for an hour but no one answered. It is the worst customer service I ever met.

We booked our flight in August 2008 and in November 2008 they called because they found out our return flight had been canceled for Sunday so it was changed so we'd be coming back a day early.
We just called the airline to find out our return flight info since we didn't have a flight number only to find out it had been canceled in December 2008.
We never received a call from Cheapoair and they refused to take responsibility for not informing us. Their terms and conditions on their website are a joke since it basically says they take no responsibility for anything that happens.
We ended up paying more for a flight and they still might not refund us the correct amount from the first airline that canceled the flight.
Do NOT do business with this company and tell your friends. We wish we had looked for feedback before we booked with them. You'll never see negative feedback on their website because they won't own up to their mistakes.

To CheapoAir.com:

I recently booked a flight online through cheapoair for $776. On the booking page it states: "Your credit card may be billed in 2 charges totaling the above amount...Your total will not exceed the above amount."

Credit card statement came showing 2 charges totaling $785. Customer Service rep says there was a price increase at time of ticketing and refused to refund the excess amount charged. I agreed to pay $776 not $785 for my tickets. I know it's $9 difference but I have NEVER encountered this hidden fee scam at any other online travel sites. Sneaky.

You mean if you "claimed" at time of your ticketing, the price went up $200 and I will be stuck with that amount and there's nothing I can do? Don't think so. If what I agreed to pay is NOT the amount you will charge my credit card, THEN SAY IT! Warn people! I can certainly go elsewhere where they will charge me the exact amount I know and agree to pay! Don't put on your webiste "Your credit card may be billed in 2 charges totaling the above amount." because it's not true; don't put "Your total will not exceed the above amount" because you KNOW it will exceed the quoted amount for any reason you give, price increase or whatever!

I will never use cheapoair again nor recommend it to anybody. Fortunately $9 is a small price to pay to learn my lession from this company.

As many users here have complained---FRAUD FRAUD FRAUD!

I went to this website cheapoair.com to book some tickets to Germany for me and my 2 kids.I took their site because they had the cheapest price and I needed a good price since we do not have that much money.

So I tried to book and I made a mistake when I entered my credit card information, so I had to retype it and the page refreshed and without me knowing the dates changed as well(instead from 1.June to 4.Aug it went from 1.June till 4.June)I really don't know how that happened(YES, CHEAPOAIR DOES SWITCHES DATES ON YOU!), but anyhow I had made the booking and I was so happy about it because I thought everything was ok.
But not even 5 minutes later I noticed the dates and I totally panicked.I tried to call the company, they were very rude and not negotiable AT ALL.So no help from them, even I explained them what had happened and the the dates had changed when the page refreshed.So I was almost crying cause they had already taken out the full amount of the tickets out of our account(better say on hold).I called my bank to stop payment, but they couldn't do anything because that department was already closed.SO, I had to call cheapoair back and try to talk with them again.
There was this girl working there she tried to tell me that the tickets could be changed but I had to pay extra money for it, even though it had the same price, cause like I said, I had the flight already for those dates .I was totally frustrated and crying and didn't know what to do, so I agreed to pay the extra money to fix the dates.So they said they will charge me credit card AGAIN for the same amount plus the extra money and refund the old amount.(Which is a really strange method).But I agreed, if they would not charge me a cancellation fee for the old reservation.And the girl told me not of course not, cause I'm booking a new flight with a higher price.I thought everything was ok, but she did not send me a confirmation for the new flight right away so I had to contact and she promised me to send them the next day.
SO the next day she calls me and tell me that she can not book the new flight cause it gives her always an "error" when she books it and so therefore I can keep looking on another website for another flight.And I asked her how can I do this if you have ALL of our money on hold to be released to their company?She tried to calm me down that the amount will be refunded in as little as 72 hours.(Yeah right!)But she said they will charge me for that even it was their fault, so she lied to me and this is how this site make money as well, by ripping people off and giving them the runaround, VERY TERRIBLE COMPANY!)So the end of the story the next day I receive an email that the flights have been canceled and I will get a refund IN 4 WEEKS!Can you believe that?They wanted to take thousands of dollars and keep it for up to 4 weeks(not to mention ALL the money that we had at that time)!I had to do something, so I called my bank and I explained the situation and I had luck, they could stop most of it but the still owe me $72, and it has almost been 4 weeks since the cancellation.I want my money back and then some.For the worst customer service and lies and rip off that they do to people.I hope they will run out of business, cause this is not they way to make money, horrible, horrible company!
DO NOT USE THEM!