FlightCatchers.com review: Flights 1

PLEASE DO NOT PURCHASE THROUGH THIS COMPANY!

We made the critical error of buying flights for our honeymoon to Japan in Feb 2024 through Flightcatchers (originally finding them through Skyscanner). We booked at 6.30pm on 01-11-23 and after receiving an unsolicited email directly from Flightcatchers a bit later that evening, it raised our suspicions about this company. We did some digging and found a lot of very concerning reviews, some older, some very recent.

At 9.08pm on 01-11-23 I emailed saying I had concerns and asking about the cancellation process. At 9.21pm I asked to cancel our flights and have a full refund. This was roughly 2.5 hours after first booking.

At 9.34pm I received an email from a different representative telling me that I had to inform them "before 12am tonight" if I wanted to cancel otherwise I'd lose all of our money. If I did cancel, "an amount of 200 GBP per passenger will be deducted as the cancellation fee".

As you can imagine, this was horrifying news to us, and only cemented further are concerns, aligning with many previous reviews from other consumers where they have said Flightcatchers took unreasonable amounts from them in cancellation fees, seemingly without any prior warning that they could do this.

We tried to reason with them, asking them to reconsider their decision based on the fact that we only bought the tickets hours before. They would not relent, continuing to apply pressure that we either cancel and take the hit, or we cancel after 12am and lose all of our money. In the end, as we felt like we had no other choice and felt incredibly uncomfortable proceeding further with a company who would treat consumers like this, we agreed to cancel and Flightcatchers agreed to reduce the cancellation cost to £177 per person.

However, the situation continued to be an ordeal. We have had to relentlessly chase them to process our refund. They promised they had done this but they hadn't, as shown on some documentation they sent across to prove they'd processed it, but the date did not align with when they originally said they would be processing.

They keep referencing their T&Cs and I have scoured through them and cannot find any mention anywhere of their strict deadlines regarding when you must inform them of cancellation nor any mention of their high cancellation penalties. Where does the £200 per passenger come from? I have repeatedly asked to see documentation that shows where the £200 pp comes from and have not received anything.

I have found this entire experience not only frustrating but lacking in any logic. It is impossible to have a rationale conversation with any of the staff. They lack compassion, empathy, and seem intent on grabbing as much money from you as possible. They are not trustworthy.

Please learn from our expensive lesson to not book through a company like this and if you are intending to because the flights look cheap, please look at the reviews online, especially under Polani travel, which is their umbrella company. Do your research before you tangle with them, I wish we had, especially as we ended up re-booking directly with the airline and it only cost £30 pp extra when compared with what we paid through Flightcatchers. In addition, we now have full control over our flights, we were able to book allocated seating for free through the airline, which Flightcatchers were insinuating isn't a possibility, and we feel so much more reassurance about the legitimacy of our flights, knowing that we have full control, and can see all the information ourselves.

AVOID THIS COMPANY, DO NOT USE THEM!