4/24/18

Dealing With Europe Travel Snags That Were Resolved...Thank Goodness


We hit another snag along the journey of “trip planning with a travel agent” and it was just one more reason why I don’t think we will be using a travel agent again in the future.  Thankfully, we got the issue resolved.

Last week, our travel agent called regarding booking our rail pass from Basel, Switzerland to Munich, Germany.  This is the only thing we have left to finalize and the only part of our trip that the cost could change.  We were hoping for a decrease in price from the estimate she gave us, which was based on last year prices.  Of course it is our luck that the price increased by another $100 total and that made the cost of two one-way 1st class tickets almost $1,000.  We wanted to experience Europe by train but we weren’t sure we wanted to experience that badly!

 


We set up a call with our travel agent and in the meantime spent the week researching the costs online but just couldn’t figure out why her quote was so high.  I reached out to another travel agent I know and called Viking to confirm that if we decided not to take the train that they would fly us over at no extra cost since we booked our air travel through them.  We were sad to think we would have to cut the train ride but that was just too much money to spend.

I’ve been thinking all along that our issues are mainly communication related.  Regardless, she did a search for us again and saw the same prices we were seeing.  Apparently last week her vendor searches came back at twice the price as this week.  I guess it is a good thing we questioned it!  We ended up locking in the price of two tickets for $420.  Her vendor even came down below the online price we saw for our inconvenience.  So that was nice.  We also got a price adjustment on our original itinerary through the travel agency so we almost have our trip paid off.  That is so awesome!

We have a little over four months until we will experience Europe for the very first time.  I am so excited.

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