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by stevedomin 1213 days ago
This wouldn't be a random site: it could be your bank, an hotel, an events/experiences marketplaces, etc. And there would be a reason for them to offer flights alongside their core experience: it might be they want to enable you to redeem points for travel, have special deals with airlines that they want to pass along to their customers or there's a benefit from a UX standpoint to selling you flights alongside other products.

> Who handles support for rebookings, cancelations, etc.? It's bad enough having to go through an OTA with airlines/hotels when there's a problem; they tell you to call Expedia.

As much as possible we try to enable our merchants to offer self-service flows for cancellations, changes, etc. The airline systems don't always let you do everything programmatically so at that point whoever is selling the flight who be in charge of the customer. We're exploring ways we could provide support ourselves, to take that load off of our customers.
1 comments
ceejayoz 1213 days ago
> The airline systems don't always let you do everything programmatically so at that point whoever is selling the flight who be in charge of the customer.

OK, so this is my sticking point.

There are horror stories of Expedia somehow accidentally not booking the flights they've sold. You get to the airport, there's no ticket and no seat. Airline says "nothing we can do, call Expedia".

They can't call Duffel. I can't fix it programmatically. Customer's sitting angry at an airport, honeymoon ruined. What happens?

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stevedomin 1213 days ago
> You get to the airport, there's no ticket and no seat

We issue instantly issue tickets / pay for the booking so and for a lot of the major airlines we're plugged directly into their reservation system so this should be an extremely rare occurrence, if an occurrence at all. Nobody should ever miss a honeymoon because of that imo.

Customers won't be able to call Duffel but can get in touch with the merchant that sold them the flight.

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nathansherburn 1213 days ago
> Customers won't be able to call Duffel but can get in touch with the merchant that sold them the flight.

As a merchant using your software, would we have priority access to the airlines' support lines? I ask as Duffel looks like a very attractive idea but if we're forced to wait on hold for 3 hours to speak to United's standard customer service for any customer issues that can't be fixed through the API, that would be really tough.

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ceejayoz 1213 days ago
> this should be an extremely rare occurrence

I think this dramatically overestimates the levels of perfection in airline IT.

> Customers won't be able to call Duffel but can get in touch with the merchant that sold them the flight.

Who can take what action to fix the problem?

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malborodog 1210 days ago
...don't you mean, AN 'oneymoon?
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