Caution Advised As Some Third Party Travel Booking Services 'Price Gouging' Customers

A Dunedin woman is urging people to check they are not booking flights through a third-party agency, after her elderly mother paid $1300 for two one-way seats with bags from Wellington.

Penny, who did not want her last name used, said her mother thought she had booked with Air New Zealand directly, but she had actually booked through a website called Gotogate.

If she had booked directly, Penny said she would have saved about $600 on the flights on 3 January, for her and her grandson.

At the time of publication, RNZ found Wellington to Dunedin seat and bag fares on the Air New Zealand website for $436 per person.

"Normally, she's really, really careful about these sorts of things. She's aware of internet fraud and all of those sorts of things. So it was kind of distressing... it hit her confidence," Penny said.

Penny said when her mother realised what she had done, she rang Gotogate to plead for a refund, explaining she had made an honest mistake.

Gotogate told her it was not a refundable fare, Penny said.

Penny said she and her mother contacted Air New Zealand to check the tickets were genuine.

They were, but her mother had unwittingly been charged an extra $20 for an exit-row seat located away from her grandson, Penny said.

"She's not allowed to be in an exit row seat, because she needs wheelchair assistance to get to her seat," she said.

Consumer NZ's Head of Research and Advocacy Gemma Rasmussen said third party websites often paid generously to appear near the top of internet search results.

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"When you go onto a search page, the top results that you're seeing may not be genuine - it could be whoever's willing to pay the highest dollar and actually market themselves.... and the way in which they're worded can make flights look really appealing or affordable," she said.

"While it's very sad, unfortunately it is legal and it highlights the level of due diligence that you need to do when you are searching for flights online, particularly when you're entering flights into Google."

Air New Zealand was not responsible for the price that appeared on a website like Gotogate, she said.

"It is really unfortunate that there are these third-party sites that do engage in what we would say is price gouging. They are charging way more than they should be. We often see this quite a lot in the musical event space, particularly when there's a scarcity of tickets, but unfortunately, that can extend to airlines as well."

Penny said Air New Zealand advised it could not cancel the tickets because Gotogate was legitimately registered as a travel agent, but it had moved the seats so her mother and grandson were sitting together.

She and her mother were looking into whether their bank could refund the fares, she said.

Rasmussen said consumers could dispute transactions through a bank process called chargeback, but that might not cover unintended third-party bookings.

"Chargeback is really for things where a good or service hasn't been provided adequately. What chargeback unfortunately doesn't cover is remorse or regret, or perhaps making the wrong choice," she said.

RNZ has contacted Air New Zealand, Gotogate and its Swedish owner, Etraveli Group, for comment.

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