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Old 22nd Jul 2014, 17:50
  #30 (permalink)  
radeng
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: south of Cirencester, north of Lyneham
Age: 77
Posts: 1,267
Received 25 Likes on 12 Posts
I wouldn't trust travel agents at all. I told the company one that I wanted to go by train from Stockholm to Copenhagen.

'You can't do that' she said.

'Yes, I can. They have opened a bridge across the sea - the Oresund bridge. the trains and a road runs across it.'

'I'll get back to you'.

30 minutes later

'The train takes 24 hours and you have to change 4 times'

'Funny, that is not what SJ, the Swedish railway people say'

'Well, it does'.

'Don't bother', I said.

SJ were quite happy to take a booking over the 'phone and have the tickets ready for me to pick up at Stockholm station.....

Later, the amount of travel had decreased so the company went from a contract with the travel agent to individual ticket pricing. I pointed out that if I booked my flight direct with BA on my credit card, it cost £4.50. If the travel agent booked the flight (and they charged the full BA website price to us!) they charged £15 for doing it.......I was told to book direct.

Further back in time, when it was a big multinational before it got split up, the company changed travel agent - and overall business travel was in the £100's of thousands back in the 1980's. The new lot were more expensive, incompetent (got several wrong destinations for people) but had the advantage that they were owned by the wife of a main Board Director!
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