Battle of the Travel Agents (I Lose)

There are some days when traveling is incredible: you meet interesting people, have fascinating experiences, and learn new things.

Other days, you feel like curling up into a hole and dying.

Today was one of those days.

All I needed to do was put $5 on my Skype account and call Air Arabia's center in Sharjah to postpone my flight. I had already done that for one ticket, and it was free (bonus!), but I ran out of money continue the call to postpone the other ticket.

I go to put money on Skype. But Skype decided to change from Paypal to Moneybookers last month. OK.

Then Moneybookers rejected my credit card because my internet address was in Egypt. Great.

I could transfer funds from my bank, but that would take 2-3 days, and I needed to change the flight within 24 hours.

Or I could pay Moneybookers directly by credit card, but they verify your credit card by text message (why?) and it would only do US phone numbers. At this point it seems like Skype is conspiring to never let me call again.

So rather than wait for my family in the US to wake up so that I could have Moneybookers then them a stupid text message, I went to a travel agent here in Cairo.

Normally, I have a pretty set procedure for not getting ripped off because I'm a foreigner: always ask the price in advance. It works all the time. Well, nearly all the time:

Chris: "I'd like to change my Air Arabia flight. But could you please tell me what your comission fee is before you make the change?"

Agent: "Yes. Can I have your info?"

Chris: "Sure, here it is. And please tell me how much before you make the change."

Ten minutes later:

Agent: "OK, the fee will be 485 Egyptian Pounds [roughly 90 USD]." Outrageous.

Chris: "Thanks. I'm going to go elsewhere."

Agent: "I already changed it."

Chris: [Expletive]



Now, it turns out that the fee was in three parts: the Air Arabia fee (116 pounds), the company comission fee (84 pounds), and the lady's personal comission fee (185 pounds).

I had told her not to make the change unless I said so, and she acknowledged that she screwed up. So I threatened to call the US Embassy and police unless she removed those fees.

What really stinks is that the Air Arabia fee would have been free if I had done it myself online. But Air Arabia doesn't offer refunds, and I knew that she wouldn't back down on that fee, and that the police probably wouldn't back me up either.

So after two hours of haggling, she agreed that I would only have to pay the bottom-line Air Arabia fee. The 485 pound fee dropped to 116 pounds, or about 20 USD.

Still, that's 20 bucks more than if I could have called on my own.

I realize it's not a lot, and to be fair, they didn't really rip me off because they didn't get any profit from the deal.

But there are fees that are unavoidable (borders) and those that are avoidable. The hidden Israeli border charge was $25, but I didn't mind paying because I had no alternative. This smaller fee peeves me like no other because it was totally avoidable.

And the best part: I just recharged my Skype account.

Now I'm going to do what locals do to de-stress: eat a big rice pudding and complain to every Egyptian within earshot at the nearest sheesha cafe. It's weirdly therapeutic.