On February 26, 2014 I booked a flight on Penair through Airfare.com. This was the first time I had heard of Airfare.com, and the first and LAST time I will ever “do business, ” if you can even call it that, with them. I was lied to, I was interrupted on the phone, I was hung up on, and I was left with no choice but to file complaints in as many places as possible. After purchasing my ticket online, I received a confirmation email, which included my confirmation number and booked flights. Buried within the body of the email was the phrase “reservation waitlisted”. What does this even mean? I called Airfare.com and spoke with a representative who was nearly unintelligible and extremely rude. I explained that I had just purchased a ticket and received the email I described above. After being put on hold for about 10 minutes, I was told that “the airline was unable to confirm my reservation”. When I asked for additional details of what exactly this meant and whether or not I would be confirmed a flight, as well as whether or not my credit card was or would be charged, I was only told that I would need to “make another reservation”. Throughout this conversation, I was repeatedly interrupted, so I really didn’t get a chance to fully ask my questions. Eventually, because I was getting nowhere with this person who was becoming more and more difficult to understand, I asked to talk with someone else. Usually, when you ask to talk with “someone else” you get someone who is more helpful and more knowledgeable than the previous person. This was not the case. This individual, while somewhat easier to understand, was even more ill-mannered than the previous, interrupting me more and providing false information. To begin with, he said that I first received a confirmation email, followed by an email saying that the airline cancelled the flights I had booked. For starters, this is not the correspondence I received from them. Secondly, I was now being provided a different explanation for my supposed reservation that was patently false. The airline still offered the flights (I later booked with them directly). By this point, I explained that I wanted to have something in writing from Airfare.com stating that my reservation was cancelled and that my credit card would not be charged. I had to talk over the representative to make my point: I want to be sure you are going to charge me for something I don’t have. “Fine, I’ll do it now, ” he said. But when I got the email, I was shocked to see that all he said – word for word – was: “Unable to confirm by the airline, and you card is [sic] not been charged yet.” The key word here is “yet” … my card has not been charged “yet”. When I pointed this out, all he said was, “You need to make another reservation.” With that, I called Penair directly, and explained what had just happened. The woman I talked to was as helpful as she could be, given that the reservation wasn’t initiated directly with them. She did say that she could see my name in the system, but that a seat hadn’t been assigned, and that it would be up to Airfare.com to initiate that request. She also confirmed that both flights were active – that is, that they were not cancelled – and that seats were available. She also added that similar complaints had been made by others who had made reservations through Airfare.com … every detail. I asked if she would be able to cancel my reservation for good and confirm that, but again, she could not because it was not initiated directly through Penair. With that I called Airfare.com again, and spoke with who was now the third representative that I had to deal with. And another unintelligible one. But this one was even more offensive, and provided more lies. He said that I had received yet another email – one an hour after I booked the flights – saying that my “reservation was cancelled” and that I would “need to make another reservation”. When I explained that I did not receive such an email, even in my spam folder (which is perhaps where all Airfare.com emails belong), he again said, “You need to make another reservation!” and hung up on me. Immediately, I called American Express. I told the woman who took my call what had happened, and with great sympathy she said that she would put a note in my account that any charges from Airfare.com are not to be processed; only a charge directly from the airline. At least now I could be assured that Airfare.com would not commit credit card fraud against me by charging my credit card for something I did not actually buy. I am not the first to voice a complaint such as mine … just Google “Airfare.com Complaints” and wade through grievance after grievance on website after website about people’s experiences with Airfare.com. I didn’t just have a fluke experience with a couple of bad apple employees. Airfare.com’s modus operandi is to provide its “customers” with false information, impolite and disrespectful representatives, and worry and wasted time over the trip they are trying to arrange. If they are trying to get themselves fined by the Better Business Bureau and to be put out of business, they are well on their way, and I am willingly going to help them to that end.