Vayama

I found a cheap ticket from Prague to Paris and booked it. However, I quickly realized that I didn’t leave myself enough time to make my connecting flight (on a separate ticket, so I’d be out of luck if I missed it). I immediately called Vayama within an hour of the purchase and they cancelled the flight so I could re-​book it a day earlier. They required me to remain on the line while booking so I could give them the new confirmation number-​totally understandable since they were offering me a flight change, not a refund. I received the cancellation email right away and had no issues getting my money back for the first flight. Very friendly staff, and kudos to Vayama for offering a service at NO CHARGE that many airlines would have asked over $ 100 for.

Worst experience ever!!! I would never recommend this to anyone. I purchased an international ticket from them and needed to change. I called and waited for 45 minutes. The person I spoke to seemed not well knowledgeable about their changing policy. I asked a few different options of changing my ticket. Everything I asked she had to put me on hold and checked. At some point, she disappeared twice for about 20 minutes. There’s no music or anything, I wasn’t sure if she was still on the line. Finally she came back and explained something I did not quite understand due to her accent. I politely asked her to repeat again. She told me impatiently to call back later when I make up my mind.
I fly 10+ trips every year domestically and internationally. I buy tickets online all the time. This is the worst customer service I’ve ever experienced. This company is very unprofessional. I would stay away from them.

I have never experienced worse customer service in my life, besides waiting for over an hour to get my ticket upgraded from economy to business, the person simply just disappeared and never got back to me (5 times) not only once, but 5 times!
Simple tasks seems very difficult for this company!
Last time I’m booking with them!

This company not only has zero interest in assisting you in any way, shape or form after you have paid them, but they have put restrictions in place that actually prevent you from being able to help yourself. I called Vayama trying to change a flight and was treated to their 30 minute hold time, after which a stoic representative overseas conveniently explained to me in so many words that Vayama was exempt from being obligated to do anything for me whatsoever. I considered selling my return flight online, but even this appeared too much of a stretch for them (all tickets are non-​transferable). A purchase of anything through this agency essentially binds you to that specific day and time, with no compromise possible. Avoid them like the plague.

Tried to change my flights. I knew there could be charges which was fine. They said they could not change my flights. I suggested that, «surely there was something they could do.» No. — They said I could call the Airline.
I told them that we tried this and that the airline would not rebook– it had to be through Vayama.
They promised me that I could go through the airline.
I told them we tried that.
They assured me that I could go through the airline.
It told them I couldn’t.
They told me to try and call back.
I told them that I had already been on the phone for 1.5 hours and had been hung up once.
They said call back.
I said I didn’t want to wait on the phone again.
They promised to call me in 30 – 40 minutes to check to see if I worked it out with the airline.
I called the airline.
The airline told me that Vayama had to do it.
I. Never. Got. A. Call. Back.
Based on my experience my advice is to… AVOID THIS COMPANY.

Maybe the worst customer service experience I’ve ever had. Cancelled our connecting flight a week apart because of some nonsensical no-​show policy in their fine print. We had called to ask about what would have happened in this circumstance and they never let us know anything. Ended up having to buy all new transatlantic tickets day-​of since we had no other way to get home. But of course Vayama takes absolutely no responsibility for anything, existing in some weird bureaucratic limbo between providing the tickets, and taking our money. Oh, and when we’ve called to complain we’ve had customer service agents HANG UP ON US. I believe this company’s only source of revenue is from benefiting from human error to take every last cent of people’s money on technicalities and fine print. Stay away from this company like the plague.

I was very disappointed with the assistance I received when I booked a return flight from the bahamas.
When I received my confirmation email I called immediately to straighten out the mishap of the wrong flights. The agent was less then helpful and would only offer to cancel the flight for a $ 50 charge. ALL of the travel services allow for change on a reservation within the first 24 hours and this was within minutes of a wrong booking! I was totally disgusted and will NEVER again book with them!!!

What an awful experience!
The extreme wait times on hold (no matter what time of day!) was the first problem I had.
I thought everything was going well, until I had to change my plans because my father passed away back in England.
I was supposed to travel to Montréal to see a friend who is also not well at all, but two weeks prior I had to make a trip to the UK to deal with my fathers funeral.
I figured okay, I shall change my flight to a later date, shouldn’t be a problem, right? No!
After over 100 minutes on hold I was told they could not change my plans, to then be told they would have to call me back because they did not have the information at hand that they needed…
Okay I thought, maybe they could help me,
Did I receive a call back — Nope!
So, I tried calling again (at 4am PST) and still had to hold for another 45 minutes!
Long story short, they finally cancelled the flight, but now I am having to deal directly with the airline for my refund!!!
Never using this company again!

Nothing but frustration. Used Kayak to get flight info/​prices and Vayama was top on list of providers. All great until the end then «problem with credit card… call some 800 # Do not try to rebook»
800 # call center put me on hold for 1 hour. Third world rep. could not be understood and not helpful, said just try again after 30 mins. Since an hour had elapsed, I did and all went well. Got through entire process successfully. Two days later I received and e-​mail saying my flight not confirmed and call or e-​mail. Having had experience with their call center, I chose to email. Response in about a day was apparently referring to the initial failed try, not the later successful one, but I am still not sure. Looks like I may have the booking due to confirmation #‘s from the airlines.
DO NOT USE THIS SERVICE!!! I know I won’t. As I see I am not the only one with these issues, Kayak should remove them ASAP.

Hi,
Absymal service is too polite a word to express our experience.
We tried to change our trip with vayama on June 3, 2016 to a later date.
We spoke to a customer representative over phone who told us that they would charge 700USD additional for a change to August and 280 USD for a change to December, through the same airlines. So we went ahead with the trip in December.
We later received an email saying that We will be charged closer to 680 USD for the change and that our credit card was declined. a) The charge was not as per our phone conversation b) According to your mail on June 3, the exchange should have been completed only after charging the credit card.
No confirmation of the exchange was communicated to us. The exact charges of the exchange was not communicated to us. Me and spouse each spent over 1hr 45 mins waiting to speak to a customer service representative.
To no avail, none of the customer representative reached us. Left with no choice, we had to call the Accounting department (whose number was mentioned in the mail which informed us of credit card declined). The account dept. representative informed us that there is a flexibility in changing the airlines and the date once we paid the vayama fee. Post that conversation, we gave consent to charge only USD 100, and requested to put us through customer representative to change our trip details. We spoke to a person called Priyanka who arranged to call Jade (Avinash S) who identified himself as a manager with the Customer service team.
After explaining the situation to him for almost an hour, He was of no help too. Apparently there is no flexibility in changing the airlines or connections. Infact They were quite intent at getting my debit card details and charging me for fees that I did not give consent to at all! I’ve lost 8 hrs of my time, 700 usd of my money for a trip whose confirmation was not sent on time. For a travel agency, we would have expected some kind of flexibility with rebooking and ticket changes.
Too many things went wrong with our booking with Vayama. Rude customer service, pretty aggressive manager who went on to quote their bbb rating (quite surprised you have a high rating with such appalling service) and asked us to read Terms and Conditions. Vayama is nothing but a third party website for Airlines ticket sales. Travel Agency is such a misleading term for their abysmal services.

I bought a ticket, with an error in my first name (damn you auto-​populate feature), and have been working 4 weeks to resolve.
The customer service is horrible — I have called 3 times, e-​mailed twice, and they keep saying «we’ll get back to you” — and after these 4 weeks, I just don’t think it will happen with 2 weeks left to go.
I cannot even begin to express my frustration. Okay, fine anger.
Do yourself a break and just buy from a different company. The extra $ 50 is worth the peace of mind

Do not use Vayama!
To save $ 100 per ticket compared to what travel agent quote us we ended up using KAYAK which offers vayama based air tickets for international travels. We bought two tickets and during the checkout process some error had occurred and both tickets were issued on the one name. To correct this we have contacted vayama customer service and the person who talked to could only tell us «its your fault»! Had to wait 1 hour on the line to get some one to talk and then being told that! Rude customer service and absolutely helpless.
Air lines refused to do the name change and want us to talk to to Vayama –KAYAK also ask to talk to vayama. And Vayama asks for $ 250 per ticket to cancel! So we are stuck and its a lost of time, money and energy.
It is unfortunate that KAYAK is using those 3^rd party horrible air ticketing sites.
Do not use vayama just to save few dollars– they are unreliable and untrustworthy. and zero help if something needs to be fixed!

I would give 0 stars if i could. I’m hoping to do this service as a public service announcement to any fellow traveler of any kind. Avoid this company at all costs.
Vayama has by far the worst customer service known to all travel agencies. On hold for an hour before someone answers the phone. They put me on hold for 35 minutes extra and then hang up. I made a change to a flight and all I’m effing trying to get is a confirmation from the busted company, and it’s a waste of time. Will make sure that no one I know ever utilizes this company. Seriously, stuck in the stone age, Vayama. Get a grip. Almost two hours later and I’m still hearing your hold music on multiple phones at that.

I used Vayama and would never do it again. I booked, everything looked ok, then I had to do a credit card verification which seemed to work fine. They charged $ 1.50 to my card but not the full fare. I called them a day later and they said it had been cancelled as they hadn’t received payment, even though when I logged into their website my booking said it was being processed and I should receive my tickets soon.
Their fairly rude call centre operator in India, with a bad connection, told me I would have to book another fare at a new price. Made out like it was all my fault.
I booked direct with the airline after that.
I am sure some people have had no problems, but my experience was not a good one.

Usually I do not post reviews in the internet, but this one made me to do so. My flight got cancelled because of weather and missed my connection to Munich. I called the customer service to resolve the situation and get me into a different flight. Well the «customer service» even if can call it was a biggest joke I have ever encountered. I got badgered by the agent and offered no help whatsoever after telling me it is my problem and maybe, and maybe he can put me into another flight a week later. I try to not write this review by emotion because that is the worst but please do not use this company for your sake. I tried to write in here what happened in a nut shell and it was much more to it. I wish there is a minus star in the rating.
There is many other place to book your flight and you will be much better hands.

If I could rank negative stars, I would do so. This agency should be eliminated from any 3^rd party services. Let me count the ways in which Vayama sucks arse.
1. Needed to urgently change a reservation, so filled out online form. No response three days later. No acknowledgement of the change form, other than «we will get back to you within 48 hrs.»
2. Called them from Ukraine, where I work, should have been early AM Calfornia time. I was queued up as #13. On hold. The hold took 58 minutes. AS soon as I was queued to be next up, the call just went blank. I was calling from Viber and showed as connected. They just never answered. Furious, I hung up and wrote a scathing note to their so-​called ‘customer service’ to which I have not received any reply (2-​days later).
3. I am now on hold again in queue #5, for the last 20 minutes. You think they could beef up staff? This is organisation supposedly serves an international audience. But, perhaps they are too insulated in their Silicon Valley bubble to give a S**t about folks living abroad.
4. Fees to change a ticket are horrendous. Had I been able to access this reservation sooner, I“d likely have saved a few hundred USD.
NEVER again, will I use Vayama. I suggest avoiding them at all costs. The «cheap» cost of tickets is complete bullocks. You spend far more time, energy and personal funds when you book with them.

We went on Safari to Africa and purchased through Vayama a one way ticket on Precision Air form Kilimanjaro to Dar Es Salaam to connect to a KLM flight to Amsterdam. When we got to the airport, we were told by Precision Air that our flight was delayed and we cannot make the connection to KLM. We immediately made some frantic calls to Amsterdam and were
Re-​routed to another KLM flight from Kilimanjaro. Upon returning home, we contacted Precision Air to get refund on our tickets (BIG MISTAKE!!). They are one of the worst ever airlines to deal with. Luckily, I contacted Vayama (David Rush) and told them the saga we went through.
Vayama tried to contact Precision Air but guess what, no luck too. Shortly thereafter, Vayama got back to me, apologizing and offered us $ 200 coupon to use on any flight booked with them.
I loved their response and plan to use them more in the future.

Really, don’t use this service. I’m going to complain to Kayak that they should eliminate it from their list of trusted 3^rd party services.
— It creates confusion for the carrier (who ultimately has to take on the angry customers due to Vayama’s terrible system)
— You are unable to book seat assignments online (additional fees apply to book seats through the carrier)
— It takes a lot of detective work to find out what your true booking code, flight numbers, terminals really are (4 hours over two days — many phone calls to two different airlines)
— Many more fees apply, so it’s NOT THE GOOD DEAL THEY ADVERTISE.

As with all the other reviews I must leave one star as Unilocal does not allow zero stars.
We booked our flights with them. As the flights changed we were never notified. On the third change one of our flights was completely cancelled and we were given no notification. Fortunately we had given our flight itinerary to our Travel Agent and she alerted us; otherwise we would have been stranded overseas.
They then tried to give us a new reservation that left us in London for 14 hours, saying it was the only option. Our Travel Agent had to call them repeatedly to get us new flights home.
Dealing with this company has cost us countless frustrating and exasperating hours doing their due diligence and on hold with the airline companies. Hands down our worst experience ever.

I had a horrible experience with Vayama. Booked a flight from San Francisco to Chennai that was cancelled due of floods and airport shut down. I was told that we were confirmed for a flight on a later date. I asked about refund options and was told that either rebook or lose your money. I was also told that an email confirmation will be sent regarding the rebooking but I never received the email. I called their customer service to follow up on the status and was informed that our booking was not confirm and we were on wait list. They also said they will look at a full refund option. Wonder how full refund suddenly became an option. It has been 4 days now and Vayama has still not resolved the issue.
Their customer service is really bad because they do not return calls and emails as promised. They provide false information and are slow to respond.
I was so frustrated with Vayama customer service that I decided to call the airline directly even though they clearly stated that I need to direct calls to Vayama. To my surprise, airline resolved the issue in less than 5 minutes and rebooked us on the next available flight.
Stay away from Vayama. I would never have booked a ticket with them but Kayak redirected me to their website.