Student Flights, 179 Boundary Street, West End

Reviews

• Billy Moss

  01.09.2018
  ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
  I’m never booking through Student Flights or Bamba travel again.
  
  My Student Flights rep was very helpful at first but she made me book with Bamba even though I didn’t want to at first, but she gave me no other options. She’s a travel agent, can’t she book some hostels, flights day tours and transfers herself? Once I handed over my money she lost interest. I would wait weeks and months to get an email reply. I would have to call her to chase her up, she would say she sent emails that never arrived. She told me that Bamba would have all of my travel and accommodation vouchers sorted at least 10 days before my South American trip started. But I was in America for a week before my trip started. I was calling my Student Flights rep in the weeks and days leading up to my trip and I couldn’t get her on the phone. I was calling every day for 3 days and anytime I spoke to her I kept getting the “Don’t worry I’m on it, everything will be sorted” nonsense. She promised Bamba/herself would send through everything I needed but they never did.
  
  It wasn’t until just 2 days before I left for Rio that I got my vouchers/itinerary for my trip there. Thankfully my hotel in Florida had a computer and a printer. But I don’t want to spend my holiday organising my holiday, that’s what I paid a Travel Agent to do.
  
  Then when I got to my hostel in Rio they had no record of me staying there, seriously? I had to stand there dealing with 2 separate staff members trying to prove I had been booked there, which is just what you need after a long flight. Also I’m very lucky I was in America for the week before my trip, if I had been in a remote area of South America like so many other people I would have had no access to internet and I would have been stranded.
  
  Then on my last day in Rio I had to email Bamba to ask about the itinerary for the rest of my trip, they said they thought they had sent it but they hadn’t. Thankfully they sent it just in time and thankfully the hostel had semi-reliable wifi, many do not.
  
  Also I was carefully reviewing my itinerary (which I had to, hoping to avoid any more hassle) and I noticed I arrived in Sao Paulo the day before my flight out of Sao Paulo. So I had to spend one night of my holiday searching for hotels in Sao Paulo near the airport. No one told me about that night, not Bamba not my travel agent. Also for my boat transfer from Ilha Grande 2 different times were listed, again I had to contact Bamba to confirm the time. I felt like I was a travel agent myself during this holiday, having to roll emails around everywhere trying to get everything organised.
  
  When I got to Paratay I thought I should go to the boat tour company just to check my booking for the next day, because Bamba had already messed up so much. Good thing I did because I had actually been booked mistakenly to go THAT day, if I hadn’t checked and if the boat tour company hadn’t been accommodating and booked me for the next day I would have missed out completely.
  
  Then for my flight from Sao Paulo to Buenos Aires Bamba again emailed me asking me to confirm my flight time. Turns out I had an old copy of the flight time on my phone, because I had booked all of this months and months ago and flights kept changing so there was confusion. Anyway the time of my flight wasn’t confirmed by Student Flights until late that night, the night before the flight. Again, I was very lucky the hotel (that I had to book for myself) in Sao Paulo had wifi – otherwise I would have spent about 8 hours waiting in the airport.
  
  When I got to Iguazu my hostel again had no record of me staying there. It’s great fun spending 30 mins talking back and forth with reception at 1 in the morning when you have to be up early the next day. Apparently it was cancelled for some reason. Why?

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