Travel Agent

Message I Gonnasagree Moodley aka Mano would like to lodge a complaint against Wolo travels. I booked a trip to Vietnam with Wolo travels. I did not deal directly with the agent which was Boledi Matheba because we did a group booking so she was communicating with one person from the group. The contract was forwarded to me which I did read and understand. At that time my passport was valid so the booking was done and everything was paid for. It was not brought to my notice that at time of booking that my passport will not be valid at time of travel. The travel agent could have brought to my attention at time of booking which was in May that I will not be able to travel with it in November. On 30 October I tried to check in for my flight on 1 November then only did I realize that my passport was invalid because the system red flagged me. I immediately called Boledi she said it’s not her responsibility to advise me. I then asked for advice she said I could cancel, reschedule or take a risk go to the help desk humble myself and plead my case. I did tell I did not live down the road to take all my luggage from KZN south coast and go to Jhb. I could not take that risk to be turned down at the airport. I did enquire with other travel agents and the embassy and they reassured me that I would never be allowed to travel. As a result I had to cancel my trip. My husband was also booked to go and unfortunately he also had to cancel as he could not travel without me. We are senior citizens we had saved to go on this trip. We were very disappointed. In my opinion Boledi could have alerted me at the time of booking. It seems like she was just interested in doing the sale. Even when I encountered this problem she did not show any empathy and still gave me hope by telling me to take the risk. This is not the advice you give to senior people that are ******** of travel rules. As a travel agent she could have done better. Now we stand to lose lots of hard earned money. I hope this issue can be addressed