I booked a flight from Boston to Johannesburg. It was certainly my error, but Travelstart did not warn me that the flight would take TWO DAYS to get to South Africa, including a 14 hour overnight lay-over at JFK. I realised the error as soon as I had made the booking and Travelstart would only make a change with an extra R2150 fee, which I thought was ridiculous. Will not be using them again anytime soon.

A warning about using Travelstart DE and AirBaltic. During November 2009 I booked a flight from Tel Aviv to Berlin on the 25th of December and from Berlin to Tel Aviv on the 3rd of January 2010 via Riga, for an initial cost of 328 Euros. The first flight was almost great. Although my girlfriends baggage was damaged, after an email to AirBerlin regarding the problem and some emails back and forth, they've accepted our claim and will issue a refund cheque.

The flight back was the problematic one. One day before the flight we've received an email asking us to check-in online. We still can check-in at the counter but it will cost us 5 Euros. That started to smell bad, sending this kind of email a day before the flight - since it is a vacation it is reasonable to think that people won't check emails during this time and asking to print the e-ticket might raise the assumption that it was an attempt to charge us extra 5 Euros. The real problem was the check-in counter, the nice lady told us we need to pay extra for our baggage, since it hasn't been paid for during booking. This was very strange since it is obviously stated in our ticket that a 20kg baggage allowance was included per traveller. Nothing helped and we had to pay the amount. During the flight the food and drinks cost extra money. At no point during booking it was stated that the flight don't include baggage or food and drinks during the flight.

After the incident I've emailed both Travelstart and AirBaltic about the problem asking for our money back. AirBaltic's response was short and strict: "The ticket did not include baggage and that's why you had to pay for it". Travelstart's response was "We don't understand what happened, it is stated in the ticket, check with the airline" and showed me a FAQ indicating they are not responsible for anything. Another response said "we provided the information (20kg baggage) for free and not is responsible for it". According to this logic I should also check if a desired location exists before booking. Another response said that the booking was made after November 16th, when bookings should charge extra for baggage - again, this wasn't stated anywhere.

The flights ended costing an extra 30 Euros. For this price I know I could have got a better deal from another company. If it was up to me, I would have chosen a different airline and a different booking website.

The prices are loaded when compared to the airline directly - I tried booking a trip to China but when compared with the same class and fare type Travelstart where about R600 more expensive than the Singapore airlines site. Also the taxes are not the same as Singapore airlines. It would be much easier to open different ages for the airlines you want to fly on and check the prices before booking with Travelstart just to compare.

I was very impressed with with the service and prices paid, will recommend it to anyone looking for a reasonably priced flight anywhere in the world.

The site is very slow and not easy to navigate. Different online sites use different search engines. There are those used by travel agents that will load in 15 seconds. Not all of them offer "so called" cheap flights. If you do your homework, you will soon realise that there are fewer seats available on discounted carriers when demand is high. Don't try and do any changes or cancel, you could loose everything you have paid. Remember their are less restrictions on "regular" airlines.