eDreams Becomes An eNightmare

Usually when I purchase an airline ticket for Europe I go to cheapOair.com. I've had very good luck with it on many occasions. Not so on my last trip. At that particular time several other booking agencies popped up on the screen and the best prices were offered on a website called eDreams from France. 

When I first booked the ticket, I tried going from Rome to London Heathrow. After I clicked the flight I wanted, I noticed that it was going to Gatwick airport which meant a more expensive train ride into town and several Tube changes along the way, rather than a direct route on the Tube from Heathrow to Earls Court where my hotel was located.

Okay, I made a mistake, so I backtracked to where the flights were listed and believed that I hit the button for the tickets going to Heathrow. I continued on the website until I had finished paying for the plane fare. I made one serious mistake. I failed to look at the confirmation notice. Two days before my flight to London, I looked at my printed confirmation for the first time, and realized that the plane was going to Gatwick. This meant that backtracking did not work on this site, since the first tickets I clicked on were the tickets that I actually purchased.

Mistake number two was that nothing on either the tickets nor the itinerary mentioned anything about the baggage. When I arrived at the British Airways counter in Rome I asked what our baggage allowance was. I was told that we had no baggage allowance at all because I had purchased an inexpensive ticket. When I went to the BA website later that day, it clearly stated that each passenger had a one bag allowance, with no reference at all to passengers purchasing low-cost tickets. The eDreams site had a link to baggage allowances that failed and redirected me back to their site. The BA agent insisted that we could only bring on one carry-on bag weighing 13 pounds, or less. Since that was impossible, we ended up paying for bags at the cost of €46 each. Ouch!

Lesson learned; check your itinerary immediately, find out about baggage allowances before purchasing your ticket, and only deal with websites that you trust.