Has anyone used or know of someone who used the service of Alpha Flight Guru or Fly Business For Less? They seem to offer very good deals on business flight tickets…I have read mix reviews about them so not sure if they are even legit.
Yes, I have. Not exactly Alpha Flight Guru, but something like Elite Travel or Luxury4Less. Regardless of name, these are frequent flyer barterers that uses someone else’s credit card or FFP miles to book you the ticket. They will use something like “exclusive deal with the airlines”, so they “can’t publish the fare online” so you have to email or call for a quote. It is not illegal to do so as there is no legislation against it, but it is clearly against every airline’s T&C, and if caught, they will cancel your ticket and you ended up stranded in the airport. Travel insurance won’t cover any excess cost because you are at fault. Just one advice, stay away from them.
I fell into the trap initially. After ticketing with them, then I googled some reviews about it, and I read the same info as above. I got nervous and contacted the travel agent again clarifying if they were FFP barterers. The agent was honest and admit the ticket was bought with miles, but he emphasized that if I do what he said, the ticket won’t be cancelled. He gave me the FFP number and the name of the account holder, so that if the airline asks, I can simply say that he was my best buddy. However, my ticket was cancelled the following day without any reason. I contacted the agent again, he couldn’t give me any explanation but was kindly enough to refund my money. Overall I didn’t lose anything but started to learn how to play FFP game. But it shows big brother is watching and is very easy to get caught.
Don’t rely on the “good reviews”. They can be written by their own employee (especially the ones specify the name of the agent, most likely themselves who wrote the review), or could be from people that got lucky and didn’t get caught.
If you want to buy cheap bussness/first class, better buy miles directly directly from the airlines, not only it’s legitimate, it is cheaper. eg. My original ticket I bought with them was from BNE to NRT rt for USD$3000 in business class with Star Alliance. If you buy miles from Lifemiles, the same trip would costed me 80000 miles, which during their promotional sale of 1.5c each, is only USD$1200, or first class for 100000 miles, that is only USD$1500! This is less than half of what they charge, and being legit, I have no worries about ticket being cancelled.