Married Connections

What is a married connection? Married connections can be
a travel agent nightmare. The problem that we continually
run into ALL the time is that clients go to one of the
online booking engines, such as Expedia or the actual
airline sight itself and are able to magically confirm
a passenger on a set of flights, yet the travel agent
is unable to see that availability due to married
connections. That set of connections is actually
available and if the travel agent is given the flight
numbers and city pairs, we can magically confirm the
flights by long selling and voila, we can confirm
reservations on the requested itinerary.

Why is it OK for Expedia to offer a sold out married
connection when travel agents are not. It's not like
the airlines are paying travel agents a commission for
what we do!! We just take extra good care of our mutual
clients and God forbid if travel agents "break any rules",
they get dinged with outrageous debit memos which in turn
is something that the individual travel agent has to pay
for, sometimes this can be thousands of dollars and none
of us in this industry are making tons of money, since
the airlines cut commissions. In fact since travel
agencies now need to charge ticketing fees, to provide
good service, many traveller's have chosen to book their
airfare online in order to avoid the ticketing fees.
I understand it, but it certainly doesn't encourage me to
continue doing a job I love to do.

Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz in my opinion are just
online travel agencies without a person to talk to unless
you have an issue and then chances of being well taken
care of are slim to none. Something just seems so
ridiculous about allowing those online booking sights
get away with selling something that really isn't
available using a married connection. The airlines claim
that "travel agents" are NOT ALLOWED to do this, so why
are these online travel agencies allowed?? Go figure!!!
It seems like the airlines are just doing things a
little bass ackwards and they're gonna shoot themselves
in the foot. Travel agencies are no harm to them, so why
make things so complicated. We are their best resource
when it comes to customer service and we are certainly
worth the ticketing fees which we charge, because we
truly care about the passenger and always go that extra
mile to have them be happy traveller's by the time they
arrive at the airport to greet their ticket counter
personnell. Who wouldn't want cheerful employees. I
hear time and time again, how RUDE the airline
ticket agents are and I believe that if I, as a good
travel agent, keep the passenger happy, that is the
beginning of a safe and pleasant journey, one which
would be passed along to the airline employee's. It
would seem to me that the airlines would be happy
to have the travel agent continue to take good care
of their clients, but yet the airlines do everything
in their power to complicate the process. Makes NO sense
to me AT ALL!! You'd think they would think this through
and realize how valuable we truly are to this whole process.