BudgetAir review: Booking a flight

On July 1st, 2024 I booked a ticket for September 17th, but when I received the e-ticket from BudgetAir, the date inexplicably had changed to August 19th. When I contacted their customer support, they refused to investigate how their system had changed the ticket and instead said that I had to pay $760 to change the ticket to the correct date.

The agent I spoke to refused to let me speak to a manager, refused to transfer me to another agent, refused to provide me with a manager's email, and refused to provide me with a manger's phone number.

When I repeatedly tried to explain to the agent that the problem was that their system changed the date of the ticket, they explained that they were "sorry for my inconvenience" but refused to waive the change fee to fix the problem that their system had created, saying that they had to abide by "airline policies." However, the $550 they wanted to charge me was not a fee required by the airline but was the change fee BudgetAir imposed. I identified this to the agent, but they said it was not possible to waive their own fee.

Since this incident, I've read multiple reports of other customers having the same event happen to them: the e-ticket issued was for a different date than the one they purchased. It seems that BudgetAir's approach is to sell low-cost tickets, change the dates, and then charge hundreds of dollars in order to fix the ticket to a correct date.

I will never do business again with BudgetAir and I recommend that you never do so either. Their system is either programmed to changed flight dates (so they can make money off of change fees) or it is horrendously buggy. Either way, their lack of helpful customer service means that changing a ticket after the fact will be horribly expensive. 0/10, do not recommend.