Choice Air - WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE EVER

This is my first review on cruise critic - I have been a member for a long time but I mainly use it to browse for information. My recent experience with Choice Air has left me so angry that I feel the need to warn others away from their service.

Normally, I book all flights direct. However, we recently signed up for the royal caribbean Visa card and one of the "perks" of signing up is a $50 Air2Sea credit for any flight purchase. For this reason, I thought I'd take advantage and use the service - I love Royal Caribbean so I figured their airline program would show the same courtesy and customer commitment. I could not have been more wrong!!

My husband and I were originally booked to sail the Harmony in May 2017 to the Caribbean and I secured us Jet Blue tickets through the Air2Sea website. Unfortunately, due to medical reasons, we cannot go to the Caribbean any longer while Zika is rampant and decided to change our cruise to a Western Pacific leaving in September 2017 on the Explorer. I will say up front that I absolutely understand that changing/cancelling a nonrefundable flight will incur penalties and I was prepared to pay those. I wanted to understand what those penalties would be before I made any changes to my airlines tickets so I called Royal Caribbean to have them change our cruise reservation and to get information on what to do with my airline tickets. I let them know that I did not want them to cancel my airline tickets yet, because at the time flight times for that airline had not yet been released for Sept 2017. I was told by Royal Caribbean that they contacted the Choice Air department and the only penalties I would face were any incurred by the airline and that any changes I needed to make I would have to do directly with Jet Blue. Ok with me...

I hung up the phone and proceeded to log into the Jet Blue website with my reservation information so I would have it in front of me when I called them, and my tickets were cancelled!!! Issue #1 - they cancelled my tickets without asking me.

I spoke to Jet Blue and they reassured me it wouldn't be an issue because the travel agency (Choice Air) had my money, not them. They said the person I spoke to must have been mistaken and any changes I made needed to be done directly with Choice Air. They advised that once flights for September were made available, I could just call Choice Air and have them use the credit from the cancellation towards a new flight as long as I did this within a year or my original booking (no problem there, I booked Sept 2016). There would be a $90 change fee and if the flight I wished to change to was LESS than what I originally purchased, I could use the balance towards that change fee.

The flight schedules for September have since been released by Jet Blue and I called 3 days ago to have my credit applied to my new flight. Unfortunately, now that I'm going to the west coast instead of Florida, I'm very limited because Jet Blue doesn't fly west very often. Since I knew I would have a $90 penalty per person, and the options were limited, I decided to purchase just a one way ticket out. My initial purchase was $261/ticket and the new one way ticket I want to buy is only $159. This leaves a balance over just over one hundred dollars per ticket that I was told could be used for the change fee. I don't mind losing the little before that would be left over from that.

The last three days I have been given runaround after runaround. The story now is that I cannot use the extra hundred dollars per person towards the change fee. They are wanting me to pay them separately on my credit card for the change fee (so for my husband and I, another $180 total!), but yet the balance I would have left over from buying these one way tickets they would also get to keep.

I asked to speak to a supervisor who insisted this was correct (even though the previous calls I made, no one ever told me this) and he called Jet Blue himself. After a long wait, he came back and said he was going to connect me directly to the airline and they would re-book my ticket using the credit for the change fee. Fine.....

I speak to Jet Blue and they inform me that yes, she will do this but they need to charge me a $50 per person fee because they didn't book the original ticket. I do understand this because the money is currently with Choice Air and they have to then do the leg work to get the money back to them. The Jet Blue supervisor was super helpful and apologetic, but as we continued to talk she said to me that Choice Air was wrong and that they could process my request as I was asking. She calls them back and speaks to a different supervisor and works out the details with them before coming back to me and letting me know that Choice Air could process what I needed and she would transfer me back. I was transferred back and as soon we started speaking, I was hung up on! Now I had no idea who I was supposed to talk to, and when I call Jet Blue back they tell me that they have numerous call centers and can't direct me back to the woman I was talking to, even though I had her name.

Now I'm extremely upset and call back Choice Air one more time to try to talk some sense into another person. I get someone more helpful this time and he looks through some documents on his end and reads the policy verbatim to me that states if the new ticket is worth less in value than the original ticket, the balance can be applied to the change fee. Finally!! He processes the request and says I'll have an email within 24 hours with my reservation number.

....24 hours goes by and nothing. He calls me back and is very apologetic, stating due to the confusion it took longer than normal to process and the 24 hold was now gone, but that now that they've done the legwork on the ticketing side, he could reprocess the request for me right then and it would go through normally. I'm told to expect my confirmation to be emailed to me shortly and I think I'm finally done!

One hour later, I receive a voicemail from him saying there is now a problem and they don't think they can process my tickets this way. I was at the theater so I couldn't call back right away, but once I did, the man who had been helping me was no longer there and I'm now currently starting all over AGAIN.

To date, I have spent no less than 6 frustrating hours on the phone being turned in circles by a company who does not live up to what they say, or the policy that they read to me! Everytime I get a new person, it's a long drawn out process to get them up to speed and they each give me a different story.

I am not trying to get out of being accountable to for the change fee in any way - but they cannot explain to me why they want to keep my $102 per person credit, and then still charge me another $90 per person separately!!!! This is just plain robbery!

I still have no resolution, I'm waiting for them to call me back yet again as they scheme about how they can take as much money as possible from me.

I used them because I had that $50 Air2Sea offer - this was SO NOT WORTH IT. I'm not even sure if I'll be getting that credit now either since I had to change flights.

This reads like a rant on TripAdvisor. It's way too long with too many extraneous details. There are many agents who have no idea what they're talking about.

ChoiceAir should have made these changes for you.

Travel agency rules (read the section Residual Value in an Exchange):

http://www.jetblue.com/travel-agents/cancellation-policy/

These problems are why booking airfare directly with the airline is recommended.

First I never buy non-refundable tickets from Choice air other similar cruise air department. That way I can change if the price goes down.

If the ticket was non-refundable and non-changeable, then it is worthless unless flown. However, without specific details of the fare rules for your ticket, we're just guessing what your situation really is.

I concur that you have been dealing with people who primarily operate from a script.

One problem is that you thought that the air and the cruise were not connected. You told them in effect "cancel the cruise and I'll figure out what to do with the air later". But that's not how it should work. They are linked - if no cruise, then no air. You can't have the air trip without the corresponding sailing. In your rush to cancel the cruise, you hadn't done the research first on what the process is and what the details incur.

I won't get into a big discussion on the RCCL credit card. I will say that getting a card for a $50 value is not a wise choice.