ExploreTrip
Reviews and Complaints

Contact bbb I don't know how they still have an a+, they are scammers! They had the nerve to call me 6 times at 655 am and then changed my seat selections without my authorization.

Booked tickets, tried to cancel within 24 hours there was a 250 charge, fine never mind I'll keep the dates, mind you this was within 1 hour of purchasing (my bad didn't notice the midnight date change). I thought it was ridiculous... but then came the craziness. I get a call today, 3 days after I've purchased the tickets and I'm told that I need to pay $149 dollars extra to get seats. WHAT?! I'm traveling with twin 3-year-olds to Asia, a 13-hour flight. The man says that if I don't pay we won't sit together, in other words, I will have 2 toddlers sitting in between people. Obviously I call EVA and they try the best they can do because they obviously don't want 2 kids running around. My question is why didn't they inform me of this fee before?!?! Ok so I'm on the phone with them again (exploretrip) and now they are telling me I need to pay only $100, but they can't guarantee my flight back will have seats together. I went online myself, didn't pay extra, and was able to get the seats assigned together for the leg out. I didn't tell the rep on the phone that yet, and he's really trying to charge me $100 for something I can do online by myself for free. He kept telling me to listen to him, and I asked him why, since he was lying to me. I asked if I pay the 100 if he can guarantee that we will sit together, and he says no, SO WHY WOULD I PAY! I wish there was more I can do than file this complaint, they use some company called https://www.feefo.com for their complaints and so I'm going to be sending a complaint through that as well. Save your time, money and headaches, go to Vayma instead! And BBB why in the world is the company still an A when there are more complaints than anything else!

Exploretrip.Com, a site to be avoided!

i purchased 2 flight tickets from this travel agency for my spouse and myself, from baltimore, md to houston, tx, with departure scheduled for july 30, 2018 at 6:15 pm and arrival on july 30, 2018 at 8:22 pm. These tickets cost me a total of $394.08 and were to be serviced by united airlines. When we got to the check in counter, our passports were requested. We had just our state ids and demanded explanation for such a request. That is when the counter attendant informed us that our flight was an international flight and as such we needed to show passports. We assured him that we bought tickets for houston, tx and no where else. After checking the flight details, he assured us that the flight was going to cancun, mexico the next day, but transiting through houston, tx that day. All our efforts to board that flight were futile because we had no passports and because they said we had a bag to check in, whose final destination could only be cancun, mexico and united airlines could not be responsible for returning the bag to houston, tx. We spoke with united airlines and explore trip customer service representatives to no avail. United airlines demanded an additional $400.00, that is, $200.00 per person, to book us on another flight that same day, while explore trip proposed cancellation with partial reimbursement. I declined the partial reimbursement and demanded full reimbursement, assuring the explore trip customer representative that the company would hear from my lawyer. The trip was nevertheless cancelled before i had time to accept united airline's proposal of additional $400.00 and when i returned to the counter to give united airlines the go-ahead, i was told this option was no longer available since explore trip had already cancelled our trip. I visited all the airline counters and none had a flight leaving baltimore, md to houston, tx, that same day. I ended up booking another trip with spirit airlines (confirmation code: li2ssh) leaving at 06:05 am next morning and arriving houston, tx at 12:27 pm. These 2 tickets cost me $685.60. My spouse and i could not spend the night at the airport. I booked a rental car with hotwire (confirmation number [protected]) at a total cost of $52.45 and we traveled to germantown, md, where we spent the night at a relation's house. I refueled the car the next morning for $15.00 before returning the car. Explore trip made me to incur extra expenditure. From an initial $394.08, i ended up with additional $685.60 and $52.45, giving a total of $738.05. Explore trip has since sent me a partial refund of $199.52 to my account. Explore trip caused me to incur extra expenditure. I was not prepared to get new tickets for my spouse and i but i had no choice. We had to get back to houston, tx or risked losing our jobs. All i need from explore trip is the reimbursement of $149.41, being extra expenditure minus initial expenditure. That is, $685.60(spirit airlines flight tickets)+$52.45(hotwire car rental serviced by thrifty)=$738.05. $738.05(extra expenditure)-$394.08(initial expenditure: explore trip flight tickets serviced by united airlines)=$343.97(extra expenditure incurred). $343.97(extra expenditure)-$194.56(partial reimbursement received)=$149.41.

Purchased 2 roundtrip tickets on 1/30 and money cleared my account on that day. With also the insurance that cleared my account on 1/31.
The tickets was from detroit to dallas and dallas to detroit.
I have not received my e-tickets because there is still a balance owed to spirit that was not paid by this travel agency.
That is why I have not received anything.
I have been calling for over a week and dealing with people that keep saying it looks paid on our end.
And When I called a week ago the guy said looks like you have travel insurance and I see you paid. By that's not updated.
This has been a night mare. What has happened with my money? and my Tickets?

Do not do business with exploretrip. I booked 6 tickets to lima peru on a wednesday for $625 each ticket. I get an email confirmation from them immediately. but 2 days later on friday evening I get another email from exploretrip saying I in fact don't have the tickets! what the heck!? I called exploretrip and they said they can book new tickets for me but it will be $750 each! they waited until the weekend to inform me I have no tickets because they know (and I know) airfare are at the highest during the weekend.
I refuse to give them my business. i'm rebooking through another agency that is trustworthy & reliable.
It makes me angry that they wasted my time and money.
Exploretrip is a scammer!

A flight I recently booked through your website has the wrong first name. I entered the passenger's name correctly (Parker) but there was clearly some mix up between the passenger's first name and the name on the card purchasing the ticket. I double checked the information before pressing the final button to book the flight. Now it has the right date of birth, right gender, but wrong first name. I didn't realize this until 29 days after the ticket was booked. The representative I spoke with said that if I had called sooner they would have changed the name. They claimed that they are unable to do anything without charging me another $100-$400 or refunding a partial credit to be used only with that airlines and their travel services. I have spoken to Alaska Airlines, and they said they are unable to touch the ticket because it is a bulk ticket. This was not my problem or my error and ExploreTrip is unwilling to help unless I pay. Timeline shouldn't matter. Yes I booked the ticket 28 days ago, but the trip isn't for another 50+ days. This needs to be resolved. Either the name needs to be changed or I need a refund.

My Daughter who is very young and in the U.S. Military booked a flight on November 21st and cancelled a couple of hours later. She was to leave Dallas, Texas to Laguardia NY on Spirit airlines- flight 344 on December 25th 2017. She was told that she would get her refund within 7-14 days. I have repeatably called on her behalf and now they are saying 7-14 WORKING days!She is on a very tight budget and needs that money to get home for the Christmas Holiday.

I wonder how they are still operating. They are the worst of the worst.
If you have an opportunity, book elsewhere, never use this company.
They promised to refund as soon as possible as the flight was canceled.
I waited for 2 weeks and called them again. They said they have never heard anything about my issue and said they will refund within ten business days.
Ten business days had passed and I got only half of my money. To my question "what the hell" they referred to their policies. Ugh, no explanations, just stole my money and run away!

I am requesting for a name change because I renewed my passport after booking the tickets and I had to legally change my maiden name to married name. I was told to submit all documents via email which I did on october 19. I received a confirmation regarding this on october 20 from explore trip and was advised to wait for korean air's advise on this.

Fast forward to today, 30th of october, I called korean air and they said explore trip has not forwarded anything to them! Explore trip called them on 23 of october regarding the request for name change and was told by korean air to email supporting documents, which they never did! It's not hard to forward my email containing my supporting documents!

I've been hanged up a lot of times today by explore trip. And that just shows their poor customer service. They have arrogant call agents to! Liars! Inefficient!

As per korean air they can process name changes within 72 hours from receipt of the documents. And guess what, it's been 10 days since I sent my supporting documents to korean air!

You know what? I don't want your representatives to give me advice in their rude manner.
I bought 4 tickets for my family 3 weeks before the trip. The ExploreTrip had sent me a confirmation email and I was absolutely sure that the flight was booked and I had nothing to worry about. One week before the flight I was checking my bank account and didn't find any charges from the ExploreTrip. That could mean that our tickets were not booked. I immediately contacted them and their representative started to teach me how I should have done not to let this situation happen. He said that the flight was canceled, but if I was more attentive I would have noticed it. Whatttt? So it's my fault, right?
Go to hell ExploreTrip with all of your representatives.

Wish I could give them the most negative rating for all the mental harassment they caused. You'd better book from other websites and stay away from theirs.
I tried to book several dates as their website kept saying that they were unavailable. Checked the same on other websites and my dates were open and available for booking. I just wanted to save money and to buy cheaper tickets. Now I know that cheapest is the dearest.
Their customer service is garbage because every time I called they hang up on me and never called back.
So unprofessional. I don't want to use their service anymore and will never recommend this crap to anyone I know.

I recently purchased a flight from Toronto to Santa Marta, Colombia with Explore Trip. When I looked at my credit card statement after booking the flight, I noticed an unauthorized $72.25 charge to my account that is listed as AGENT FEE TRAVEL SERVCS. This is a problem for me as I do not remember being charged an agent fee while checking out and buying my ticket. Furthermore, my friend booked the exact same flight at the exact same time and did not get charged a $72.25 agent fee. Her credit card statement lists only the price of the flight. I'm very concerned that I have been scammed & am requesting a refund for the $72.25 that I was charged but am having difficult reaching customer service.

Update: I recently noticed on my card that I was also charged 9 dollars more for the exact same flight as my friend ($326 vs. $335). Is this how Explore Trip offers cheap flights? By scamming some of their customers? After contacting their customer service I received no real help & they continue to insist that they did not put those charges on my card. Either they took that money from my account or their website is poorly secured and compromised my credit card.

My daughter is a 20yr old UK student on holiday in the USA. She booked a ticket with explore trip.com for a flight from San Francisco to IAH (Houston Int'l) with Frontier Airlines. When Frontier cancelled the flights (IAH was closed due to Hurricane Harvey) my daughter contacted explore trip.com to ask for a refund. Exploretrip told her to contact the airline, which she did. Frontier were very helpful and after telling us they refunded the money to a credit card in her name, they helped us to find out some further info about the credit card (it is NOT a credit card she possesses). It turns out Frontier has refunded ExploreTrip as they use their own cards to make transactions. I contacted ExploreTrip AGAIN, and their employee at the end of the phone (bearing in mind I am also calling from the UK to the US) tried to say that our refund is with the Airline. When I explained that the airline sent me proof of the refund, the employee simply said "write to [protected]@exploretrip.com". I have done this 2 or 3 times and still no reply after 3 days. They owe my daughter $104.50 and also a refund for a previous charge that was wrongly paid. What can I do to further this complaint about ExploreTrip? Advice from anyone would be greatly appreciated.

I purchased tickets from LAX to BKK, and in trying to select specific seats, I contacted the Explore Trip, which kept answering god knows what question since they didn't appear to read my email request. I then contacted the airlines directly, and they said we didn't actually have tickets, even though my credit card was charged. I contacted Explore Trip, and they just kept telling me I had tickets and if there was a problem to call the airlines in CHINA! I explained that might be expensive on my cell phone, and I had to beg to get them to call the airlines in China for me. Finally they said they would, and after being on hold for 20 minutes, they simply let me hear one minute of talk from the airline's automated system and then the phone hung up. So I called again, and repeatedly they said I had a ticket, so I kept arguing and arguing, saying Explore's system might say I have a ticket but the airline's doesn't, and I don't want to end up at the airport without tickets. Finally, the consumer service rep did a deep dive and found out the tickets were void, that they had to reissue new ones for some reason that didn't make sense that they blamed on my credit card company. So now we apparently have tickets, finally. I asked if I could just cancel the tickets because I didn't want to do business with Explore Trip, and they said no way. I mean, there's unprofessional, which these guys are, but then there's just blame incompetent. I've flown to maybe 60 different countries, and this is the worst ticketing company I've ever used.

Do not do business with this company! Unfortunately, I didn't read the reviews before I did try to buy a plane ticket. I needed a ticket to fly to Lisbon from the States. Booked online. Got an email with in minutes with a totally different flight itinerary. One with a 23 hour layover. Called within 30 minutes to cancel. No problem to cancel said Dan. And we can help you find another flight, the one you want is not available anymore. About $100 more, got another flight. Dan, the sales person "forgot" to cancel the first reservation. Now I have 2 tickets on the same day, different hours but for the same person. 2 charges on my credit card. I asked them to remove the first charge, since that was cancelled. They cancelled both, and put them back on the next day. Refused to fix it. I called every day now, several times. No resolution. My credit card company has stopped all payments.

This company is a joke!
I booked tickets for my family, got an email saying:
Thank you for booking with ExploreTrip
This is not your e-ticket
Hi Stefan,
Your Hong Kong - Singapore - Hong Kong flight is booked.This is not an e-ticket confirmation email. E-ticket will be sent in 4 hours.
Please use the below ExploreTrip Ref/PNR no for any communication with our Customer Service Representative.

When after 4 days I did still not receive another email I knew something dodgy was going on and here it comes:
Dear Customer,

Thank you for your email!

Please accept our sincere apologies, but unfortunately the reservation you made was not confirmed. As mentioned on our website the price and availability of our low fares can change quickly and cannot be guaranteed until the ticket is issued.

In this case, the airline cancelled the available seat before your card was charged because it was booked by someone else. We tried to re-book the ticket at the same price for the same itinerary but were not successful. We regret the inconvenience caused and wanted to let you know your credit card was not charged. We hope that you’re able to find another fare on ExploreTrip that meets your travel requirements.
For further assistance, call us on [protected].

Regards,
Brain Wilson.
ExploreTrip Support
[protected] (Call us 24/7)
ExploreTrip.com
Thank you for choosing ExploreTrip.com

It seems Brain Wilson should help with some brain...

This travel agency has proven incredibly unscrupulous and completely unethical. They fraudulently claimed to be accredited by the following: American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA), Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), and the International Air Transport Association (IATAN). However, they are not listed in any of these organizations' directories. When I reported this to said orgs, miraculously those logos disappeared from ExploreTrip's website within 24 hours!

Further, they overcharged for a fare, due to a delay on their part of the booking process, which resulted in several hundred dollars more being charged than the original quote. They then relentlessly refused to refund the overcharge, and then avoided issuing the refund over the course of 4 weeks, numerous email, over 20 phone calls, and 10+ hours on the phone being given the runaround to the point of exhaustion. It was finally issued after the threat of reporting their behavior to state regulatory agencies.

Given how awful and unscrupulous they are, I strongly feel the need and responsibility to report this. DON"T USE THEM!

I booked a flight via Explore Trip and that was a terrible experience. I paid for my ticket but never received it. After 5 hours of waiting I decided to contact Explore Trip to ask about my e-ticket but was ignored.
Then I contacted the airlines directly and explained that I bought a ticket via Explore Trip service and was told that there was no booking under my name. Red flag!
I sent them tons of messages, threatened them with police, left many negative reviews and nothing. They simply did not care and never replied.
This company is not to be trusted, please, do not use them!

Good Morning,

I would like to file a formal complaint against the agency. I had a flight on April 13 from Newark to Warsaw and returning on April 18. On Sunday, I called to make sure that everything was all set for my travel plans and I found out that the flight was canceled. I did not received any emails regarding changes to my trip. I was flighting into Poland due to a family situation where my great grandmother had passed away and my grandfather was recovering from bypass surgery. The agent that I spoke to, Duke stop to the airline and requested a refund. I did not want a refund ! I wanted another flight to Poland.

I was forced to buy another ticket for $ 1678.03 in order to get to Poland and fly out /in to a different airport. The agency could not admit to fault and kept blaming British Airways. I was on the phone on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday with a total of 20 hours and no one was able to help me. The situation that I was in was put in was beyond frustrating. Things were done without my authorization. The situation that I was put in should have never happened, all it took was rebooking me to a different airline.

I wanted to book a trip via Explore Trip and something went wrong. No matter how hard I've tried there was nothing I could do so I contacted Explore Trip customer service and their rep said that there was a problem with my card.
He said that they were not getting payment from me. That was strange, but anyways, I decided not to waste my time and used another company. Later I found out that Explore Trip did charge me and everything they said was just a lie.
When I contacted them about my money they said that they never took anything and when I sent them proofs from my bank they ignored me and did not reply!
Explore Trip is a fraud site, they owe me! Please do not book with them, the same thing can happen with you!

I have booked a flight with ExploreTrip and they charged me twice for one and the same ticket! Immediately contacted customer service and explained the situation and they promised to refund me. Waited patiently and called again to ask what was it taking so long. They claimed that I have nothing to worry about and that my refund will be issued in no time. When I called for the third time I spoke to the most ridiculous person ever! Rep could not understand a thing I said! When I explained that they took my money twice he said "oh, and what's wrong with that?". So I had to explain the whole thing again!
I did receive my money but these people gave me nothing but headache. Will never use them again! I'll better stay with more expensive companies but at least I will get appropriate service!