Vayama

Vayama gave me the option of a refund due to a flight cancellation. I was told that it would be two billing cycles until I got my money which I thought was an inconvenience but acceptable. They later told me that it would be three months because the refund was initiated on the 1st day of the month so I had missed the first billing cycle. It's now been 120 days and I still have not received a refund. The customer service representatives have either lied to me or don't know what they're doing. They have admitted to messing up my refund yet do not see interested in making an attempt to keep to their own stated refund deadline. Horrible company, will never deal with the again and would recommend you don't either.

Biggest bunch of losers in the world. I've always gone with orbitz and should never, ever ever have gone with vayama... they still haven't refunded my cash, one for a ticket purchased through their other site, cheap tickets... and another from vayama main site, these people take your money, then immediately cancel the purchase, then make it nearly impossible to get your cash back because they don't work well with banks... they're very apologetic, but apologies don't work when you need to be on a flight somewhere. Horrible. Not to be trusted under any circumstance. Pay more, but use a reputable site..

I never EVER write reviews. This is my first one ever and there is a reason I am taking the time out to write this - I don't want anyone to go through the troubles I had to...

I booked a ticket for my mom to fly out to India not expecting I am going to have to change it because usually whenever you do book tickets you don't really expect that the dates are going to change. BUT sometimes, like in my case, things happen and you have to change the ticket.

I know changing tickets on airlines is always tough and I was very respectful of that towards Vayama as a company. I told them whatever fees they need to charge, please do, but I would like to change the ticket to a different date and I will pay the difference.

They said OKAY we will do it for you, it will be close to $590 to change it, but we will submit the request to do it. Then I found out that this request department does not have a telephone line and they are based in Bangalore, India and take 2-3 business days to get back to you. Anyway, I put in a request for the dates I needed which were available when I talked to the rep on the phone but he couldn't book it for me since it had to go through their request department. So I waited 2 business days and I got a response saying those tickets aren't available anymore. Fine. I called back and talked directly to a supervisor, Mike, for 2 hours. After a lot of running around in circles and him giving me a lot of false information, we were finally able to book a ticket for the specific dates I needed. Once Mike told me that these tickets were booked, I went ahead and booked flight reservations in India for my mom for the second leg of the journey. My conversation with Mike was at 11 AM EST. I got a call from Vayama at 9:45 PM and they left a VM saying those tickets were not available. The reason I got a call at 945 PM is probably because thats when their department in India probably starts their work day. So again the next morning I called to try to get things going again and at this point I just wanted a refund. They told me I would have to wait 2-3 days to see if I would get a refund or not. At this time I asked to speak with the supervisor of the supervisor who told me that there was nothing she can do. At that time I asked this new supervisor, Quetha, to speak with her supervisor to which she responded "I can help you because this is what I get paid to do". Worst attitude I have ever heard.

I am writing this review at a point where this issue still has not been resolved and I have come to accept that I have lost my $1600. At times I felt as if this website could have been a scam. They will prey on you if they can. They will last second make changes to your flight. Do NOT book with them. Do NOT trust them. Take my word and save yourself some serious serious trouble.

I will sum it up in a few bullet points but even if you have to pay a few extra bucks at a different website, trust me it will be WORTH it in the end.

-Their customer service is close to non-existent. You will be put on hold for hours and in the end the rep will apologize to you and tell you 'we only have 5 people working out Bangalore, India and there is nothing we can do about it'

-You will go in more circles than you can ever imagine.

-Different people will tell you different things. Do NOT trust them.

- Do not expect the dates you book to be the dates you get. They will change it on you.

-I am tired of writing but it felt good to get some frustration out. As a consumer who has seen excellent customer service and bad customer service, I am 100% sure this company by far has the WORST customer service you can ever imagine. Also as someone who has just lost $1600 to this website, I am hoping you tell all your friends and family about this ordeal and to never book with Vayama. I will be starting a pretty solid social media campaign against the company in hopes of sparing people from having their money stolen by this website.

I highly suggest you do NOT use Vayama. I have been treated horribly by them. If you are expecting any kind of customer support or flexibility when airlines change their flight, do not use Vayama.

I have been hung up on 3 times by rude customer service representatives and lied to on 2 instances. They are extremely slow and do not do what they say they will. They put me through a circus and would not let me talk to anyone in charge. One employee admitted to me that he lied to me - as our conversation was turning south he said I was breaking up. I called him out and he apologized. Another customer representative told me there were not supervisors in the office to talk to but when I pushed harder for 5 minutes I found myself talking to a supervisor.

I purchased a ticket through Vayama for a South African Airways flight. Vayama contacted me that the airline changed the flight and then did not put me on another one. When I finally discovered this, Vayama told me the flight was full and my only option was to get a refund. This trapped me in a dangerous city by myself and I was forced to buy another ticket with a reputable name.

Vayama claims to stand by their customers before, during, and after their trip but did not stand by me at any point. Instead, they were rude and left me stranded in a dangerous city.

STAY AWAY FROM VAYAMA. Once ticket is bought, they make it impossible to make any changes. They give no information over the phone. Every request for information or changes must be submitted in writing and takes longer than the 24 hours they state it takes to receive a response. When you need to travel and make a change, it should not take 3 days to receive a response. They will Not give their ID or last name for identification purposes over the phone. When you ask to speak to a supervisor, they put you on hold for ever, literally. This place is terrbile. STAY AWAY.

This is the first time I've used Vayama for a flight overseas to the Philippines. I originally went with them because the price of the tickets was a little cheaper. Had I known the issues they would cause I would have run immediately. First off they change my flight twice, and getting on contact with them is a pain in the $#*!. The last time I spoke with them I was waiting for 45 minutes on the phone. They originally change my flight time, then suddenly a "minor change" was made to my flight leaving out of Las Vegas to now suddenly leaving out of Los Angeles two weeks about before my scheduled flight. I told the Indian man on the other end, who had no concept of why this wasn't good that I needed a flight out of Vegas. He had me on line for another 5 minutes to tell me "sorry no flights out of Vegas to California until the 17th of January. Apparently no plane will ever leave Las Vegas to go to California within a month. I finally gave up and ended up having to buy a ticket to Los Angeles the night before my flight since it's too early in the morning to drive to. So all in all, I had to spend an additional $113 for something they screwed me over with and all they could say was "no, there is no other flight". I couldn't even change airlines or anything. I will NEVER use Vayama again. On that note I had two flights scheduled with them and both flights have been changed 3 times since. I'll also include that a 13 hour layover in San Francisco is ridiculous. They picked the absolute worst times for me. On my return flight I leave out of Manila at midnight. By far the worst company I've ever dealt with on customer service.

I just wanted to give a word of warning after an awful experience we had with Vayama through a deal found on a website. A website posted a deal for tickets to Thailand for three weeks through Vayama a while back and my boyfriend, a friend and I jumped at the chance to be able to afford to go. We booked our tickets back in June for about $850 and were eagerly awaiting our November 9th departure date.

I had been checking our flights regularly and at one point we did try to request to have our flights altered so we only had one stop on the way to Vancouver but this proved to be impossible through the company. A slight annoyance since in the past it's been easy to do this through airlines but we sucked it up and figured we'd deal with the 14 hour layover we had in our schedule.

Then the day before our trip, November 8th, I checked our flights. We were flying Vancouver to Shanghai with China Eastern and Shanghai to Bangkok with Sri Lankan Airlines. I noticed a change in the time of our flight to Bangkok and upon further inspection realized the flight left TWO hours before we arrived in Shanghai! We had received "Schedule Change" emails before from Vayama over just a twenty minute difference in a flight, but absolutely no contact was made to us regarding our initial flight being cancelled and a new flight now on a different day and inconveniently leaving before we arrived in Shanghai...

All three of us were on the phone with Vayama throughout the day and they were awful. The worst customer service I have ever experienced. We begged them to rebook the flights so we could grab a connection elsewhere, we asked if we could buy a one way ticket independently but were told if we were a no show for one of the flights it would cancel the rest of the flights on our way back home. The two options they gave us were either wait 45 hours in the airport for the next flight out to Bangkok or receive a refund.

I was warned by a co-worker of maybe needing a transit visa so I phoned the China embassy in Vancouver to get more information. I was informed if we were to spend 24 hours or more in China, whether in the airport or in the country, we would require a transit visa and it would take at least 48 hours to process at a cost of $400. However, our flight was leaving in less than 24 hours when we encountered this mess and originally we had a 12 hour layover. I asked what would happen if we boarded the flight anyways without the visa and the woman told me that once we would board our flight to Bangkok, officials would notice we were in China past 24 hours without the visa and according to the law would have to be sent back on the first flight out to Vancouver.

I wasn't sure if there may be an exception to this rule if we were in Shanghai and if there may be a way to work around it, but we weren't going to risk it. We had NO other option from Vayama but to get a refund.

We had already booked accommodations in Thailand and we'd be losing out on so much money if we didn't go. We luckily found a flight through a local travel agency that left at midnight that night. It'd be an extra $500 from what we originally paid but we figured we'd use most of the money from the refund we'd be getting from Vayama. BUT, we were told it would take 25-45 business days for the refund to be credited back to the original credit card. We were desperate, so we put three new tickets to Bangkok on a credit card and flew out that night.

Vayama was of no help during this entire ordeal. The three of us traveling phoned separately various times throughout the day hoping to get a different answer. We pleaded and begged to book us tickets through a different connecting city other than Shanghai and make up for this awful mistake on their part. What's horrifying to think is that we never would have seen this mistake if we didn't check our flights the day before. When we explained this to them it sounded like they couldn't care less and they offered no compensation or apologies whatsoever.

The cherry on top of all of this is we came home from our trip recently to find that only two of the three tickets were refunded on the credit card, so now we have a whole other ordeal ahead of us...

PLEASE DO NOT EVER USE VAYAMA! It was by far the worst experience I have, and probably ever will, experience in travel. I can't believe a company would be so unhelpful and unsympathetic to such a situation. If we weren't lucky enough to have a credit card to put three new tickets on we would have had our whole vacation cancelled.

I tried to change my ticket 8 days ago. I called VAYAMA and the agent told me that he would get back to me within 24 hours. After 24 hours of waiting just to hear nothing back from them I called again, another agent told me they would get back to me yet still nothing. This went on for a week and I demanded to speak with one of the supervisors. This time the supervisor ASSURED me that I would hear back from VAYAMA within 24 hours but didn't get back to me either. I was so furious with this company and called to speak with their supervisor to request a refund. The agent transferred me to another supervisor of theirs, named STEVE SMITH. I told him either book me a ticket on the spot or issue me a refund because they apparently were unable to do what they are paid for. I would have been better off booking this ticket on my own in the first place and saved myself a fortune. I demanded that I would only pay for the penalty to the airline but not the VAYAMA service fee because not only were they not able to help, I end up paying a lot more for the ticket than what I would have paid 8 days ago as a result of trusting their customer service! Apparently Mr. STEVE SMITH had a hard time sympathizing with me and told me to forget the idea of getting my money back. He told me he would find me a ticket but HUNG UP ON ME WHILE I was waiting for him to find me the ticket. I called again and the agent told me that Mr. STEVE SMITH was busy making another call(which I highly doubt). I have never encountered such unprofessionalism in my entire life until VAYAMA. Quoting from another victim of this company:"stay as far away from Vayama as possible! They are happy to take your money, but not happy to offer real customer service."

Vayama is AW-FUL! DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THEM!

I purchased tickets and some how they messed up my return flight. I called right away to change it and the person (who could barely understand me) said that they would charge me a $50 cancellation. It was their error! They would return the fee if you re-buy on Vayama, but the tickets had already went up $100 after the error. When my credit card company and I called them a second time, a woman there told us that there was a 24hr. Cancellation without a fee. The first person didn't honor that and told me he had to charge me even though it had just happened! Both agents didn't make any effort to help me and were basically robots on the other line. Luckily, my Mastercard helped me and gave me a credit since dealing with them was useless. AVOID THEM AT ALL COSTS!

I would NEVER recommend anyone to use Vayama to book their flights. I tried to change my flight from Zanzibar so that I would fly to Heathrow and stay in London and leave ten days later than my original travel plan. I made it explicitly clear in my e-mail to them but they changed it so that I extended my stay in Zanzibar rather than in London. Vayama then requested that I pay for the flight change fee. I tried to have the fee waived but they refused. Every time I called the agency from Zanzibar, they were rude and unhelpful. Representatives promised that they would call me back or e-mail me, but they never followed through. Thus every time I called them, I would repeat the same issue and nothing would ever get accomplished. I was extremely upset and frustrated by Vayama. I will never forget when one representative told me to to go call British Airways and Tanzania Air myself to make the necessary changes.

DON'T USE VAYAMA. The website is a total scam. I spent hours on the phone trying to get a refund for a ticket because of a mistake THEY made. They purposely recorded the wrong name for the ticket and wanted to charge us $50 to cancel the ticket and then buy another one. Needless to say that did not happen. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice... The customer service is terrible as each representative says something different. One guy even yelled at us over the phone. I've read enough other reviews (after the fact) to tell me that this website makes their living off of scamming their customers and charging random fees. Hopefully something will be done to shut down this website.

Originally I thought Vayama was fine, maybe even good until I looked at my credit card statement and realized they had charged me for making 2 phone calls to them because I was having problems with their website. I didn't ever book through them on the phone b/c the attendant told me I would be charged $15.00. It didn't matter anyway, as they turned around and charged me approximately $100.00 in fees for making 2 freaking phone calls! They are AWFUL. Do NOT use this site! It's a rip-off.

VAYAMA is the most horrible company i have ever come across in my entire life. I booked a flight with them some 3 months ago. I was been told by my doctor a month prior to my journey that i shudnt travel as my back needed an operation. When i had read the terms and conditions for vayama, they said that i can change or cancel my ticket 72 HOURS prior to my journey. When i told vayama about this, they said they cannot give me a refund and put the blame on the airlines saying that the airline is not giving the money as they have certain policies.
When i contacted the airlines about the operation, they said that it is upto VAYAMA to solve this as i had booked my tickets with them.
I tried contacting vayama again. The IVR at their customer service desk sucked bigtime. When i tried contacting them thru email, they replied to me after 3 days of my email, thus delaying the whole process.
Vayama is definitely a FRAUD company. They even said that my back operation is not a reason for me NOT TO FLY, which was so ANTI-HUMAN.
They are paying me pack not even HALF of my amount and i need the money for the operation.
I would definitely suggest people NOT to fly thru VAYAMA as they have been anti-social and have caused me mental torture. The worst company ever.
VAYAM SUCKS... PLEASE DONT TRAVEL VAYAMA..

I had a horrible experience with a flight I booked through Vayama. I booked a flight to Europe through Vayama and was told a departure time from SFO. So I had booked a connecting flight from Seattle to SFO in order to catch the SFO flight in time. It turns out the departure time I was given by Vayama was wrong; it was an hour earlier than they had told me. So I had to change my connecting flight at the last minute because of Vayama's mistake- at an additional cost of $200! I have not yet received any acceptable response from Vayama.

BEWARE OF USING VAYAMA.COM. USING THEM IS A NIGHTMARE. GO WITH THE BETTER NAMES LIKE PRICELINE, ORBITZ, ETC.

I found tickets on this site that were comparable to what I found on priceline.com. I saw vayama.com was offering $5 off and thought what the heck -- I'm spending 1400 for a ticket, I'll take the $5 savings. I thought it'd be easy like other sites, instead it turned into a nightmare. Needless to say, I was stupid for being a penny pincher. I should've paid the extra 5 bucks and gone with priceline.

Vayama's customer service department is completely incompetent. They sounded totally uneducated and were simply rude and disrespectful in handling the situation. Here is the sitch in a nutshell: I booked a ticket on May 21,2010. I didn't receive a confirmation, but I saw the charge pending on my online account. About a week later, still no confirmation, and the 'pending' charge disappeared. I called their customer service. A woman who seemed very disinterested told me there is no record of the purchase, and to try again on the site. I went back on the site and purchased the ticket again. Everything seems normal. On June 7, I notice that I have 2 confirmation e-mails. I call customer service again. The woman that answered in a very sleepy manner "hello". Totally confused I said "Hi, is this vayama customer service." The lady then mumbled lazily "Yes, yes, Welcome to vayama, how can I help you?" To make sure I understood, I repeated myself. She mumbled again "This is vayama, how can I help you?" I explained the situation to her and asked about my purchases-she tells me that there has been only one charge. They very next day, on June 8, I get an alert from my bank because there were 2 charges of about 1400 that caused my account to go passed the limit.

I call vayama yet again. This time the customer rep would cut me off while I was trying to explain, she raised her voice at me, and told me that I'm wrong. I spent over an hour answering repetitive questions trying to get them to help me. At the end of it, I finally get transferred to a manager, or so he said he was. Although he was calm, he didn't do much to help me with my situation and sounded like he could care less about the mistakes his team made. They said I had to call the airlines for a full refund, so in the end, they still haven't given me back my money. The airlines' customer service wasn't anymore helpful. I still haven't been given the confirmation that I will get my full refund. I've already called my bank to file a claim. Let's hope they'll be more helpful.