FROSCH / Willett Travel

Jan 12th, 2020

It's been a long time since I used a travel agency for personal travel since, you know... the internet. But we hadn't taken a vacation for a long time and it felt necessary to commit; so we decided we would let a travel agency offer us some possibilities and force our commitment. I dropped in and met a very nice woman at Frosch Willett who ended up being.... a very nice woman, but very useless as a travel agent. I told her what kind of vacation we'd like and when we were looking to travel. She wrote back that she had a lot of ideas so I told her we would come in to respond to them. We got there and she ended up on, you know, the internet checking on two possibilities (same trip, just different dates) which we waited to find out she had absolutely no sway on or any more shot at than we would if we had just sat down at home and, you know, internetted; both of these tripswere sold out (so she hadn't done any leg work either -- and we had made the appointment with her to go over her many possibilities days prior to coming in, telling her we looked forward to discussing her ideas). When I asked what other ideas she had, she didn't have any (we had both arranged our days to have time to do what we hoped would be a full consult with her). We selected a cruise (which we had initially rejected in the general discussion) and were booked. No one asked what our price range was, what we wanted out of the cruise, and so she just...booked. ...on the internet (just like we would have)-- A room with a balcony and a view obstructed by the bottom of a life boat. I told her we were willing to book a suite and unwilling to have a veranda underlooking a lifeboat bottom. So she changed our reservation to a suite. She did nothing more and I discovered a bill for 50 bucks on the other side of our cruise for someone who sat at a cubicle and did exactly what we would have done on the internet, except she had no understanding of or interest in our wants and needs. I didn't dispute the bill (and we certainly hadn't been warned that we paid a fee [not the cruise line, which is what I expected]) but I sure wouldn't go back to have someone charge me to do exactly what we had gone to an agency for, in the hope that they would have insights that we wouldn't get from internetting on our own -- that they would have recommendations based on other clients, and that they would have some kind of access to bookings that we might not. Nice enough lady, but seriously, did nothing that we couldn't have done (and ended up doing) ourselves, offered us no ideas, and we ended up doing better on our own initiative. She had no real ideas or help to offer. We have now booked a second cruise and made sure that this was on our dime and not on an agency whose function is dubious at best and useless at worst. And bills you for exactly what you can do both for free and better. I'm still in search of the elusive travel agent from a bygone era who meets with you, has ideas for you, starts to shape something based on the dialogue. But it sure won't be at this agency. Although a harsh word was never exchanged (that I'm aware of) I never heard from her again, either --after we booked, not so much as a bon voyage, or "if you need anything..." or "how was your trip" so I guess she was a one-and-done fifty buck fee who served no real purpose.
Nov 7th, 2018

Amazing I would love to do it again
Jan 4th, 2016