I booked a flight with them because they advertised it as some sort of promotion. Knowing it was significantly cheaper, I quickly made the booking. Within minutes, they confirmed my booking—a roundtrip ticket for two adults and one toddler, encompassing four flights in total.
As I am quite particular about seat reservations, especially with a toddler in tow, I made sure to pay for reserved seats as soon as the booking was confirmed to ensure we all sat together throughout the trip.
Being meticulous, I constantly checked and re-checked our flights on the airline's official website to ensure everything was in order. To my surprise, the seats for the first and last flights remained unpaid. I wanted to sort this out before the flight date.
So, I called Flightcatchers. To start, their customer service representatives were incredibly lethargic to talk to, displaying no sense of training and seeming miserable on the phone. I did not feel they were there to help me; instead, it seemed they were itching to go home and clock out. I received a callback from their "seat reservations specialist," and this is how the call went:
I explained that according to the website I was viewing, the seat reservations for the first and last flights remained unpaid, costing £14.60 per seat. With three of us, it would be £43.80 per flight. Since a second flight also needed payment, the total would be £87.60 for both flights. Mind you, these prices were right in front of me while I was on the phone with them.
To my dismay and surprise, the representative quoted a different price instead! Her total was £194.67! I protested, saying that it was not the amount I was seeing, and we did the math together. I absolutely cannot fathom where she got that amount! I am pretty sure they were trying to scam me. Mind you, that conversation was supposedly recorded on their end.
I did not want to proceed with that amount. So, I asked for other options, and she could only offer to waive a £5 service fee—absolutely ridiculous! I even asked her to put herself in my shoes, and she agreed it was too much, yet she only answered my questions with dead-end responses and offered no solutions.
I might as well mention that I was a customer service representative before, and I can tell you, this is not how I worked. It is absolutely appalling to be on the receiving end of such horrible customer service!
These people would even fish for good customer reviews after each call! The audacity of such behavior! Absolutely unethical business practices, encouraging customers to leave a review!
I hung up as we were getting nowhere, and instead, I called the airline's customer service, and lo and behold, they solved my problem in 5 minutes! I gave them the details, and they just confirmed that all the seats were already paid for; there was just a system lag. Now, all he needed to do was refresh the system. The current seats now reflect that they were indeed already paid for.
Now, the question remains: why did they quote me £194.67?! Where did that quote come from? The answer is they are trying to scam people. Sorry, but I am not going to book through this company again. Just a warning to all reading the good reviews, most of the reviews are phished from customers.
Goodbye, Flightcatchers.