Marlene Brannen, Bird Rock Travel, San
Diego
I will never book with Utell again. When you call them for
commission, they refer you to Pegasus and they say, “We will send
another fax, but if the hotel doesn’t pay, there is nothing we can
do about it. We are not a collection agency.”
I had one group to France that I have been trying to collect
commission on for two years. I finally gave up. Plus, there are two
or three other smaller reservations that I never got paid for. I
guess they do not qualify the hotels or they have some agreements
that do not include travel agents.
Mike Flink, Freedom Travel, Butte, Mont.
No, we are not having any problems getting our commissions.
However, I do not like losing 1% to 1.5% to have them do the
check.
Lenora Porcella, Computerized Travel, San Jose,
Calif.
Pegasus, no, but NPC that’s another story.
As an independent agent, in the same office location for 11
years, I’ve got different booking numbers with different suppliers,
and working with NPC has been a nightmare. First, we were told to
contact them if we wanted to use direct deposit to avoid their fee,
but when I e-mailed them with my six different account numbers and
was told I didn’t exist.
Further attempts to resolve things with them were ignored. I’ve
received no response to my e-mails. For now, they’re deducting
their fee from each of my checks, and I may have 12 to 20 of them
in a single month.
I tried contacting a few suppliers, but the person at the other
end of the phone isn’t usually the person who has anything to do
with commission settlement. Now I’m actively working to avoid
companies that use NPC, and I hope that they get the word that
charging us for our checks is a bad idea.
After all the hits we’ve taken this year, suppliers need to be
aware that NPC’s fees are unjust. And, at the very least, they
could work to combine all amounts owed to an agency on one check
rather than issue numerous checks in small amounts.
