What to do if I was cheated by a travel website?
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What to do if I was cheated by a travel website?
I booked an on-line air ticket from an international travel website which operates from India; they have customer care representative in US but no address is available. They didn’t provide certain details to the airline which were provided by me to them and so the airline cancelled my reservation 3 days before departure. Now they are telling me that I should consent that I did the cancellation and they will refund me partially. Can I sue them in small claims court? Since the airline charged my card, can I make them a defendant?
Asked on May 12, 2011 under General Practice, New Jersey
Answers:
SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 13 years ago | Contributor
1) You can sue the travel website, but you need to sue in all small claims court in the county in NJ in which they do business; if they operate only via the web and do not have a NJ customer care representative, you will not be able to do this.
2) Generally speaking, suing an international entity is very difficult--not only is it difficult to identify where to sue, but if they don't pay voluntarily enforcing the judgment may be very expensive, possibly even impossible. (E.g. if they don't have local assets, how do you make sure you're paid?)
3) If the airline did nothing wrong, you can't sue them. So if the problem was with the information provided by the travel website, there would be no airline liability.
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