Description

We bought 3 KLM airlines tickets from an online agency called Tarifasodeal for $3334, through Cheapoair.com. Tarifasodeal then sent an e-mail explaining that those tickets were no longer available, and tried to upsell us for new tickets worth $5072 - their "best deal." When we called and asked to cancel, they lied to us and tried to gaslight us: They blamed the airline for the sudden change, and insisted that we had no choice but to pay the new price; according to them, we did not pay for cancellation protection, therefore the new tickets were "non-refundable." We explained that we never agreed to the new price, and that we did indeed pay a cancellation protection fee of $540, when we booked the tickets. (This cancellation protection fee and the original price of the tickets were conveniently left out of the initial e-mails Tarifasodeal sent us, while their website made no mention of the cancellation protection fee when the sale was finalized) The manager - a man called Ron and sporting a heavy accent, though Tarifasodeal claims to have its headquarters in Florida - became insulting and argumentative: He told us that we were not using "logic," and that we never paid for cancellation protection; he attributed it to "human error" on our part, and told us that we would have to pay the new price. At this point, we said that we would report them to our bank for fraud, and hung up. Within moments, they called back and finally offered to cancel the tickets. They were very rude, however, and asked for sensitive information first - including our passports and fingerprints! When we declined, they argued with us again until finally agreeing to a cancellation. Thankfully, we did indeed pay a cancellation protection fee of $540, when we booked the tickets. However, the cancellation was for the original tickets we bought, worth $3334 - the ones that they told us were no longer available! After all their lies, they sped us through the cancellation so quickly and aggressively that we did not stop to notice that they were cancelling the original tickets - tickets which they doubtless used again to try this bait-and-switch scam on someone else. We lost $540 in the transaction, and so much time.