Fareboom Reviews

I originally booked flights for my son Matthew in November 2019 to Germany for a summer internship on AirFrance flight for May 10th 2020 returning August 5,2020 (cost was $926.18 with $66.17 Travel Insurance included / Order # was O-2B972941). His college advised him not to go due to safety concerns with Covid-19 however the internship was technically not cancelled. When I reached out to Fareboom I was told they couldn't refund my money and -I Couldn't use the travel insurance because I didn't have a cancellation statement from internship in Germany-but I could use ticket another date prior to 1 year from purchase date. I discussed with Matthew and we decided he would take the trip before going back (since we had to use by November) to college so as to not lose the opportunity to visit Germany since I paid the money already. The flight was rebooked for August 3rd on Delta Airlines (Order #O-2B972941) and had to pay an additional fee of $52.00 for difference in Fare. As the date approached in late July it appeared the travel ban to Germany that was in place may not be lifted by August 3rd and his travel may be restricted to Germany. We reached out to Fareboom and were told that if travel was restricted and flights were cancelled then we would get a refund. We were told just prior to flight departure that we would have to request cancelation of tickets to assure we received refund. We followed their guidance and logged into the Fareboom website on July 28th. On the website a "Popup" appeared that said the flight would be eligible for refund due to COVID-19 government mandates... not sure why but this communication is not actually sent in their message system that can be traced back? We followed the steps that they outlined in order to cancel the flight and confirm for refund... We were asked how we wanted to receive reimbursement and we selected putting back on original debit card that was used... No refund came within a few weeks... I messaged them about the refund and was told first that since the flights did depart (with anyone not restricted I assume) and weren't cancelled then I wasn't due a refund... then I was told that since we cancelled the flights and not the airlines we would not receive a refund... Then I was told that I would have to go to AirFrance which confuses me since Matthew was rebooked on a Delta flight?... and I next was told..."but the Airlines are not giving refunds on government mandates...". COVID-19 has turned into the biggest excuse for not doing anything or at least the right things today... I can't actually talk to a person at Fareboom because of COVID-19... no one answers phone and the automated message says you have to message them on website. Hmmm I wonder why the customer service people can be safer typing on computer vs answering the phone forbpeople they've taken money from and given nothing in return... A majority of this nations office staff is working remotely... Can't FareBoom's customer service employees answer a phone at home safely?
My standpoint:
I paid for a flight to Fareboom (Not AirFrance or Delta), Fareboom is then my "travel agent"... they have my $978.18 in their bank account and they weren't able to provide my son a flight; therefor it didn't cost them or the airlines anything for his travel and I want my hard earned money back. Do they think it's ok to take money from people and not give them anything in return. I don't believe their business is charity! I assume they figure we'll just let our money go in their circle of excuses. I'm not asking for a free-ride. I'm the only one here that lost money and although I'm sure the airlines and Fareboom are losing money in this situation its not my responsibility to support their companies for nothing in return.

Will never use them again
I will never use them again.
I purchased 3 international tickets and the final destination airport decided to close there doors for any int. Flights.
Fareboom canceled my flights even it's not my fault, and asked me if I wanted a voucher for a year or contact Delta airlines for a refund!
Delta approved my refund, but Fareboom decided to charge me $70 per ticket as a cancelation fee.
Even it was not my fault to cancel but they said I purchased discounted tickets and that's why!
I purchased the tickets back in January for June travel. Approving the refund now.
What's so sad that they charged my card now the refund fee of $225. And telling me after the transaction was completed that there is a long wait to get my credit for my tickets because of covid19.
I fly with my family every summer international and I will never use them again.

I will never use them again.
I purchased 3 international tickets and final destination airport decided to close there doors for any int. Flights.
Fareboom cancelled my flights even it's not my fault, and asked me if I wanted a voucher for a year or contact Delta airlines for a refund!
Delta approved my refund, but Fareboom decided to charge me $70 per ticket as a cancelation fee.
Even it was not fault to cancel but they said I purchased a discounted tickets and that's why!
I purchased the tickets back in January for June travel. Approving the refund now.
What's so sad that they charged my card now the refund fee of $225. And telling me after the transaction was completed that there is a long wait to get my credit for my tickets because of covid19.
I fly with my family every summer international and I will never use them again.

Requested refund for flight to Germany non 07/02 because of Covod-19. They charged me $300 for processing the refund of three tickets. Informed me per email last week that my refund was processed, but it could take up to 4 weeks until I see it on my account. When asking for receipt for travel insurance they told me I can show them my bank statement when the money post. When advising them that even Walmart gives you a receipt when they process a refund, they finally sent me one. Discovered that the four digit of the debit card the receipt show are not mine. Wrote them now 3 times asking where my money went to and still have no response. How is it that you can take my money in a sec, but take forever to give it back?

Don't ever use this company. You are are your own should you run into any flight-related problem. Their phone line isvpurposely set up to avoid speaking to customers. Emails are hardly responded to. Worst of it all, they are very dishonest if they manage to respond at all to your emails and here is the story: Got stranded overseas due to COVID. Made concerted effort to reach them to no avail. Got auto-email on confirmed flight on the original return date despite airport closures due to covid. I ended up on a wasted trip of over 800 miles to and from the airport of departure. When I managed to return via emergency evacuation flight at an extra cost of $1350, I reached out directly to the airline in April and requested for a refund on the return trip. Delta promised a full refund and I requested a direct refund to me since I could not get hold of anyone to speak and no response via emails to fareboom/bt-store.com. Unknown to me, when a customer pays in their website, they collect the money and then pay with their own credit card. Delta refunded the money to their credit card. I have every evidence including refund tracking number, the last 3-4 digits of the credit card number where over $549 was refunded, yet the company claims they are yet to receive the refund. And then refused to respond to my email request for a refund and there is no way to speak to anybody as their phone was purposely set up not to let customer's calls go through. Even when one manages to go beyond those robo-messages in order to speak to a customer service agent, you can hold unend and the system ends the calls no matter how many times you try. If there is a way to give a minus 5 rating, I would give it

Fareboom has definitely no ethics, no customer service. I have to contact a 3 rd protection company to be served. Very poor !!!

I booked 5 airline reservations with Farboom on 09/19/2019 to fly on June 28th 2020. The airline cancelled our reservation and changed it to July 1st. Then they cancelled again and scheduled it for July 12th. I finally had enough of them deciding for me when to travel. The country that I was going to would not open the air traffic until July 14th. In addition, the country would not allow any airline to land in it's airports except the domestic airline. The airline I was traveling with, would not be able to fly us there. I contacted Fairboom many times to refund me the money, they want to charge me $75 for every passanger. I refuse to loose $375 for a cancellation that I didn't initiate. The airline is the one that cancelled my original tickets, not me. They didn't honor their commitment to fly us on the date that we chose. I know that I am entitled to a full refund without any question!
I am going to give them one more chance for them to make right and refund me the money. I used Fairboom for many years. I travel with my family every two years and bring my mother once a year. In addition to anyone coming to visit me, I purchase their tickets with Fairboom. I am also a board member of a large community which I always recommend Fairboom for all member's travel needs.
My order number is O-2B933577 and I would like my full refund!
While waiting for your response, respectfully,

This is the WORST, dirtiest, money hungry agency that I have ever encountered. We have saved very diligently for a trip to Europe 7/8-7/18/20 with our kids which would've been their first trip. Because of COVID we are Unable to travel. They issued a voucher good for one year which dosent work since we booked 1/20- our kids are school age and would need to travel in the summer. We have tried countless times to reach them over the phone to no avail. Their phone number constantly tells you to go through the website but the site tells you that you can get a voucher for a year. WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF A PANDEMIC!!! DO NOT BOOK WITH WITH AGENCY. The Ceo Marc Cadez is clearly a crook and is stealing everyone's money. I would like a personal phone call from him explaining why he is doing this to me and my family. You are a terrible person and hope will reap what you are doing to all of us in some way or other. Why don't you speak up and voice to everyone what you are doing. You should go to prison!

Pushed into a refund and then charged $150
Greetings. This is our first time using Fareboom. We purchased tickets to fly from Tampa, FL to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and back to Tampa (August 14th - August 21).

We were happy with the tickets we were able to reserve through Fareboom. But then... we received an email.

When Fareboom emailed me that our flight(s) had run into seating/cancellation problems, they gave me two options: allow them to reschedule us on alternative flights (which is the choice we first made and wrote them) ...OR... pursue a refund.

Their response to finding us alternate flights was to confirm out cancellation (which we did not choose in our initial response).

Having to confirm the cancellation (we didn't make), we were left with choosing a refund. Fareboom gave us two refund options (allegedly).

First option, accept the cancellation through them and pay $75. Second option, basically go request a refund from the airlines (in this case United Airlines).

Having read reviews, I learned the standard answer from the airlines is that my wife and I purchased our tickets through a 3rd party (Fareboom) and therefore the airlines were not responsible for any refund.

So basically, it appears that Fareboom did not give my wife and I any refund options other than to pay a $75 fee (per ticket) for them to provide me a refund within 2 months.

This is the email I received after having to accept their refund process with a charge of $150:

"This is to confirm that your Fareboom Order O-2B1149981 has been cancelled and filed for full refund per United Coronavirus waiver conditions. You chose the expedited processing option with $75.00 per ticket administrative filing fee."

My problem is, Fareboom used the phrase "expedited processing option" to justify the $75 fee per ticket (and we had 2 tickets, so its costing us $150). This "expedited processing option" is included in their response but not given as an option when I was forced to pay the $150 fee for the refund.

There was no option to get the refund from Fareboom without having to pay for the "expedited processing option".

It appears Fareboom is forcing people to pay $75 (per ticket) when the industry and government regulations / standards clearly say "Full Refund", is a terrible way to do business.

Since this whole process just occurred 30 minutes ago, I'll wait to see if Fareboom does the right thing and refunds my entire amount or keeps $150 of our money.

Fareboom sold me cheap tickets, and made me happy when I think I got a deal. that is the only good part.

Fast forward 6 weeks after I bought ticket. I happen to check my reservation on UA website, just 3 week before my flight. Boom. UA website says the flight was cancelled. Fareboom never notify me about my flight being cancelled. If I have not checked that night, I will be going to the airport for a cancelled flight.

When I contact their agent ( which took a good 40 min wait through chat, and near impossible through phone ), they told me that their system did not catch this cancellation that happened few days ago.

So I need to rush buy tickets that are more than double the price, and then when I try to cancel the ticket for the cancelled flight, it is another nightmare.

UA says this is a travel agent ticket, need to be cancelled through the travel agency. And Fareboom is hell bent on charging me $75 per passenger, even though UA says the ticket price should be refunded in full, and Fareboom already caused me to spend thousands extra on getting new ticket.

Also Fareboom says I should be contacting UA to request cancelling those ticket to avoid being charged by them.

Eventually after a 3 way call with Fareboom and UA, during which they talk about why my resservation record is not found in UA system, and how Fareboom find in their system that my flight was cancelled on 5/1 ( so they have been sitting for 5 weeks on notifying me of my cancelled flight )

Finally with UA agent's instruction Fareboom agent requested the cancellation of my ticket..... Then the ticket cancellation request was denied by UA. I end up needing to do charge back.

This is the worst experience I have with a travel agency. They may have cheap fares, but make sure you never ever need to change or refund ticket before you try to use Fareboom, also pray that your flight will never ever be cancelled. Else you might have a unpleasant surprise and financial loss. I end up spending almost 4 thousand more for my 4 tickets, all due to fareboom did not notify me about my flight cancellation.

Worst travel agency,no customer service at all,,I'm trying to call 100 times, so disappointed,I will not recommend to anyone

Worst company ever.the airline canceled my family tickets due to covid-19. Fareboom never informed me.called no response only email indicating they will take 100 dollars from each person.
Advice pls pls avoid this company.

We purchased tickets for our family to go overseas. It was the first time for us to use FareBoom. We have been traveling for 20 years in several parts of the world. Well, this year Covid-19 hit. So, you all know, our flights were cancelled. We had purchased the tickets in February, before the pandemic became a thing. So, they told us not to worry, and they discouraged us from getting the money back because it would take up to 6 to 12 months for the refund to go through. We said we would like to use the free change of tickets, and made sure it was all free, FareBoom said it was. We kept contacting them, asking them if there was any available flights. But there were still restrictions and flying bans. . Finally, we saw that the flights bans were lifted, and we contacted FareBoom asking them to use a different date. They checked and said we had to pay a charge because the fares were NOW higher. We told them we could change the tickets for free because of Covid-19 (we are victims, we did not change the tickets). They said the "free" was referred to the "Dates changing", not for the fares difference. Well, If we were NEVER able to find flights because they were not flying, how do I keep those fares? It was not our idea to change the tickets. Anyway, we decided to ask them for a refund. They told us: "you will be charged $75 per ticket, because we are small family owned business, and we will lose the commission". Dear FareBoom, we are a family that does not make so much money, and have children to feed, yet you are holding our money. So, they actually stopped answering the phones, and answer only by emails every 2 or 3 days, making it even worse Since tickets are surging even more.
So, recap:
1) It was not our mistake for changing the tickets
2) Government issued a free change (not honored by FareBoom)
3) Government issued a money back if we do not agree with the offer the airlines makes (not honored by FareBoom)
4) They do not answer the phone anymore, only emails making it hard to cooperate.

PS
Many friends that travel a lot like us told us that their airlines and ticketing companies send them money back in no time. So, FareBoom is different. We just went ahead and contacted the Department of Transportations, since they wrote an article in April saying that if we were effected by the covid-19, we are to get our money back.

Fareboom is a terrible company. They are taking advantage of people keeping there money, during COVID

I am having a very bad experience with Fareboom. I bought two plane tickets in January for travel in April to Switzerland. Due to the Covid 19 flights were canceled and I was told by fareBoom that I had a choice between them giving me my refund of course with some fees or the airline with no fees. I chose to get my refund from the airline with no fees. I filled out the form with airline and waited for over a month and then got an email from the airline stating that my refund will be sent to Fareboom and they will send me back my money. I wrote to Fareboom and at my surprise got a reply stating that they will process my refund in two to three weeks. So after waiting for more than a month I will now have to wait for another three weeks for Fareboom to process this refund.
This an extreme rip off I feel and when I call I got a recorder and never a human being.
I just wish that you should remember that business will start again and you would want your customer to trust you again however this is not a situation that people will confortable doing business with you in the future.

In December 2019 we booked our flight to Germany and then covid-19 happened.
We tried many times to cancel starting in March and now they don't answer their phones.
I have tried to find the flight on swiss air and lufthansa. There is no such flight and no one will talk to me. Germany is letting only eu members in and they must quaranteen for 2 weeks. Ec-261 says we can get our money back. Lufthansa also does not care. So please stay away from fareboom, swiss air and lufthansa.
John C.

I will admit the price was a little lower than the airline. It was an overseas flight during the shutdown. The flights to overseas were canceled. FareBoom would not issue a refund without a penalty which was more than the flights. Just a runaround. I made the mistake of booking it in the first place on impulse. It would have been better in the long run to go through the airline. At least that way you can expect some help.

This company is shadey at best. They are more than happy to take your money under the name of Best Travel Store, which is them dba Fareboom. They offer an "affordable " travel insurance. They do not honor their own policies,. Fareboom in writing tried to circumvent a Presidential proclamation that canceled flights,. With no regards to our health, or possibility of detainment, they tried to put us on a different flight. That flight also canceled,
then Fareboom stated we'd be getting a full refund since flights were canceled . 2 days after stating they would refund our money, they stated they weren't going to refund the money. We had bought travel insurance. Didn't matter. I'm having to file complaints with several agencies against them. I'm considering contacting others with similar issues and filing a class action suit against them. STAY AWAY FROM FAREBOOM.

Beware!! I recently booked a trip to Italy for March 31 to April 8. Despite the fact that the CDC issued a nonessential travel advisory for the foreseeable future due to to the Coronavirus, they will not return the price of my ticket, and because they purchase their tickets in bulk from American Airlines, the only way I can use my ticket without paying a $400/ticket price is by using it by June 30th. All other airlines are allowing people to transfer the ticket to another date. I spoke with a representative from American Airlines, and they said it was up to Fareboom and Iberius, but that they would allow us to transfer our nonrefundable ticket to use anywhere up until December 26, 2020.

Yes it was very stressful to be in another country to wake up n see in my phone: your flight is on progress' . Yes flight was anticipated 10 hours n not communicated to me. Partner airline sensing its flight was getting full tried to drop me. I ended up taking the first leg of my trip n the last one as planned. It took me several days to de-stress as I couldn't get in touch nor w fareboom staff nor w any one of the airlines in question: Azul n United.

Beware!

Booked international flights using FareBoom and
Aerolíneas Argentinas (Argentina airlines) and our flights have been changed 5 times already.

Not a few minutes or hours but days.

We have had to pay hundreds of dollars to get additional hotel rooms, extend our travel insurance and pay for transfers with their latest change that was confirmed.

Tonight they changed it again!

Will have been on all 7 continents and have never had issues like this.

Will never book anything through FareBoom and
will never fly Aerolíneas Argentinas airlines ever again.

I have never had this happen to me in my life flying with other carriers, and companies that booked our flight. My partner just found out last week that his flight got canceled. They are now rebooking him over London, so that I will arrive in Spain first to visit his parents. We were supposed to fly together. They have caused us stress with not even a phone call. Jerks! Do not book your Vacation with them!

We've used them 4-5 times for flights and found good prices and service. My cousin, an attorney, was skeptical about Detroit to Mexico fare, went without a hitch. Any airlines will charge a fee if you miss or change a flight, (except SWA). We always get travel insurance and again Fareboom offers fair price if you buy when purchasing the airfare.

This is the worst company to buy from!! If you want to lose money and basically have it stolen from you than buy. Never never ever buy from these people. If an emergency comes up and you have to miss your flight they will double charge you. I repeat NEVER EVER buy from FAREBOOM!!! STAY AWAY!!! WARN YOUR FRIENDS!!

We traveled overseas 8/2-8/19. We were Leary at first booking with Fareboom as there were limited reviews however we had zero issues traveling to and from Jordan. We were kept apprised of all flight status's and gate changes. Our flight to Jordan via Lufansa was a bit tight but smooth and we could have upgraded however we were looking for a deal and Fareboom delivered. Very pleased and will use again!