Don't book online with Czech Airlines

We're going away over new years, so in our hunt for cheap tickets on dates that actually suit us we discovered Czech Airlines.

We booked a couple of flights online, just as you would at any other airline around the world these days. Annoyingly the prices of the tickets went up during our booking, and we ended up doing two bookings one for Polina and one for myself this way one of us still got the cheap flight. Booking completed we didn't get E-Tickets straight away which was a bit odd, we got reservation numbers and a thing saying "Payment Pending". It was the middle of the night on a weekend too so we didn't think too much of it. Checking the next day our credit cards have been charged roughly the right amount, so we think everything is good.

A couple of days later, still no information the link with the reservations no longer works so we call them up. Nope sorry your flights were cancelled as you haven't paid. Um hang on - we can see the money is missing from our credit card. Back and forth back and forth over the course of three days, they ended up refunding the card money, and issuing us new tickets at a new price of course. Through dint of much persistence and "can we speak to your supervisor" they finally dropped the service fees and allowed us to pay in US dollars letting us get the tickets at almost the same price we had booked them for originally.

The best part is that at least three call centre staff told us that their online booking system doesn't work *sigh*. If you can't manage an online booking system outsource it to someone who can, or get rid of it!

The moral of the story? If you want to fly with Czech Airlines (we'll keep you posted if the actual flights are any good) then you definitely don't want to book the tickets online.

Call the call centre and get them to do it for you, don't forget to ask them which currency it's cheaper to pay in as well ;-)

Happy Travelling from a now much less stressed Jack and Polina...