Writing this to warn anyone buying flights from booking.com. My original flights were cancelled by the airline, and I was able to change my itinerary quite easily through booking.com. I was actually pleasantly surprised by how easy it was. My itinerary on booking.com was updated to the new flight. The day before my flight, I tried to check-in, only to have an alert come up that I wasn't able to. I contacted booking.com and was told that everything was ok, that I had a ticket. I woke up worried the morning of the flight and contacted booking.com to double check, and was again told that yes, my booking was fine, I had a ticket number. I made sure to arrive at the airport early, and thank god I did. There I was told that I had a booking reference but there was no ticket attached to the booking. There was nothing the airline desk could do, and I needed to get in touch with my travel agent. The next two hours was spent on the floor of the airport trying to explain the situation to multiple booking.com customer service people, who kept telling me it was the airline's fault and there was nothing they could do. I got in contact with the airline only for them to say that, yes, they could see my booking reference number but there was no ticket attached and so nothing they could do. I then had to go back to booking.com, who continued to insist that nothing was wrong with my booking. The flight was long distance—going 28 hrs home to see my father after his operation—and by this time, I'm stressed out of my mind watching the clock count down to the gate closing. My sister who I was texting found some small print saying that if an itinerary is changed, Booking.com must process a completely new ticket, which they hadn't done. So I relayed this to customer service who just kept blowing me off. It seems that no one who works for their provider Go-to-gate has any idea what they are doing. With thirty minutes to go, this absolute angel from the airline said that she'd spoken to the one person who could get me on the flight and they were calling the airline's head office. She said she sees this type of thing weekly with third-party bookings. With literally ten minutes until check-in closed, this angel managed to get me on the flight, no thanks to booking.com. I was an absolute wreck by the time I boarded the flight. When I got to my layover, I had an email from booking.com saying they'd resolved my ticket (it would have been too late for me to board the plane) and that they could see I'd gotten on the flight so I couldn't claim insurance—which just felt insulting because it was pretty obvious that I wouldn't be able to claim insurance—but after all the stress, a simple apology would have been nice. This looooooong review is purely to warn anyone else booking flights through booking.com—if your original flight is cancelled MAKE SURE they reissue you with a new ticket and insist they check this has been done. I'd even call the airline to check. I would hate anyone to have to go through what I went through!
