Thread: Advantages of using a travel agent

These are advantages that I have experienced.

This is attempt #2 at the poll! My first post was not meant to be. You can ignore it and just answer as you wish!!!

P.S. I am posting too many red faces here!!!

The reason we use a real live TA that we can talk to in person is because she takes care of arranging our AMEX Plat and Carnival shipboard credit.

Also she has the forms to fill out to arrange for something that has to be ordered each cruise for medical reasons.

And if there is a problem with our documents, she can take care of it much more quickly than we could if we used an on-line agency, etc.

I voted the fare changes. They are good at keeping up on that for you.

I get either an in cabin surprise or onboard credit each time as a thanks from the TA.

My TA handles any problems that come up for me. She's been a cruise-saver on a couple of occasions!

Although our TA usually gives us some sort of onboard credit, I would use them without it, just because the service has always been so good, they handle all the details for me and always have great cabins. Having had experience with a very bad TA, I appreciate a good one all the more.

Susan

Our TA has been able to provide us with all the services in the poll. She also assisted us with dealing successfully with a problem we had on the Summit a couple of years ago. I would never book a big trip, such as a cruise, without a travel agent. I like knowing that I have someone who is there to help me if a problem arises.

Frankly I learned my lesson using larger online TA's for both air and cruise. I am sure that if we had a bricks and mortar TA that our debacle with our tickets to Italy would have been dealt with differently and we'd not have lost 2000$+!! But I booked with a online giant and when Alitalia screwed up our tickets, they told us, "oh too bad, we don't have any luck dealing with them".......

I've saved hundreds with our TA celebrity travel always calls when the fare drops. The last two cruises we've had 15+ cabins and its alot of paper work to change prices and most won't bother, its nice to have a TA that will.