A year ago 3/6/20, my husband, daughter, and I left for a 10 day trip to Spain. Unfortunately, in January, my son was told he would be deployed on a training mission and we had to cancel his flight. In February, Rose Boudreaux, our agent, said we would receive a refund for his flights on our credit card. That refund never came. Only after paying for the entire trip in full, she shamelessly, blamed the consolidator, broke her word, and we received nothing.
While in Spain, COVID hit and the borders were closing on 3/13 at midnight. We contacted Ms. Boudreaux on 3/11 and asked her to change our flights and get us home by 3/13. The final leg of our trip was Madrid, but were informed by hotel staff in Seville, that we could not get to Madrid- the city was locking down due to COVID.
Ms. Boudreaux said she would email the consolidator and all we could do was wait. There was NO SENSE OF URGENCY. We enlisted the help of Melinda Bourgeois, owner, who said, no worries, she would help. We waited. No call from Travel Central.
All night, we called the phone numbers listed on our Travel Central paperwork. No answer. We called the airline directly. It rang until it disconnected. The website kept crashing as we tried to enter our credit card information. Finally, we spent another $8,000 purchasing tickets on another airline in order to return before the borders closed.
We NEVER received a single call from Travel Central, Rose Boudreaux, or Melinda Bourgeois. We called Travel Central as we were boarding to let Ms. Bourgeois know how incredibly disappointed we were with their LACK of SERVICE and their indifference to our desperate situation. Ms. Bourgeois said she would take care of things upon our return.
It has been a year since that fiasco. After countless hours and excuses, we have not received a single penny or apology from Travel Central with regards to my son's full airfare, our unused return airfare, or the $8,000 spent on ADDITIONAL airfare to get us home.
We engaged the services of Travel Central when traveling internationally just in case any issues came up. The most unprecedented crisis hit our world and Travel Central was NOT there to guide us through it.
Needless to say, we will NEVER use Travel Central again nor can we recommend their services to anyone. There were other errors along the way (no breakfast included at the hotels, etc. ) but the inexcusable let down was their lack of ability to even pretend to care.
Final note: I did receive a call from Ms. Boudreaux early on asking me to give her a good review so that she could win a contest. read more