Chris Elliott posted a story about
an alleged Internet Travel Website that was fined by the Dept. of
Transportation for not disclosing all pertinent charges and making it
appear that flights and hotel rates were less than they really were.
However, that turned out to be the tip of the ice berg and when I
followed some of the complaints by consumers, I uncovered a horde of
apparent rip-off schemes by not just the original site
(UltimateFares.com) but other affiliated sites as well. Apparently, a
past employee in the Billing Dept. was spilling the beans about the
companies, which apparently were fleecing unsuspecting consumers in
numerous ways. It alarmed me enough to do this post to try to warn
anyone thinking about doing business with any of these companies.
I have no experience with any of them and no gripe of my own. I am simply passing along what I found on the net but it is disturbing enough to warrant my attention. People report they were overcharged or charged more than once for tickets and another complaint read in part; "Ultimate fares has a very bad reputation in the travel industry. They not only scam their customers, but also their vendors, partners and even their own employees". Not a company I want to do business with.
The Billing employee went so far as to suggest you simply google "reviews on UltimateFares.com" and see for yourself what others are reporting. This employee also mentioned 3 other companies apparently affiliated with Ultimate: Cheapflightsales.com, Arcade Travel, and Travel Services. You can find his/her review here.
And as always, a partial solution is to get your credit card company
involved, which will take months to resolve. In the end, you may just
want to book directly with airlines and hotels - something I have been
a proponent of in my books since the get-go.
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