CheapTickets.com + United Way = Volunteer Cheap Tickets
By Kate | Permalink |
2 comments | March 8th, 2007 | Trackback
CheapTickets.com and United Way of America have joined forces to launch a “Volunteer Vacations” website: volunteer.cheaptickets.com.
The site will “focus on travel to communities across America to help people in areas of need….” and utilize the United Way’s national network of over 1300 local United Ways to “educate and arm” those interested with information and volunteer opportunities.
““CheapTickets customers want the opportunity to support communities like New Orleans with their volunteer efforts during the day, while experiencing attractions like Bourbon Street’s jazz clubs and restaurants by night,” said Steven Barnhart, president and Chief Financial Officer of Orbitz Worldwide, which operates the CheapTickets brand.”
The main features of the site are
- The presence of the VolunteerSolutions search tool.
- A monthly spotlight connecting opportunities to discount tickets.
- “A travel blog featuring the experiences and photos of consumers who have traveled on volunteer vacations. The first blog features United Way’s President and CEO, Brian Gallagher, as he discusses the importance of vacationing with a purpose.”
A number of questions pop into my head as to how exactly this new site and alliance work.
From checking out the site, it seems that the main difference from the (main) Cheap Tickets is mainly that this site offers the possibility to search for volunteer opportunities too – and there will be featured monthly deals highlighted. Additionally, the volunteer opportunities are geographically located in the US. I first wondered if people volunteering would get even cheaper tickets (which would still raise some questions in my mind) but right off the bat the practical details of making that work would be rather overwhelming (How to make sure people actually volunteer? What about others who want to volunteer but not with United Way?)…and this makes me think that will not be the case.
Comments
Wow, that sounds like a very bad experience. I’ve bought through Cheap Tickets at least a few times (uh oh, don’t tell Bootsnall!) and didn’t personally experience any problems…but I always used the most basic levels of it and didn’t try the other services. I’m glad you got your money refunded (after a lot of effort it sounds like) and I can understand why you’d want to avoid the company in the future.
It looks to me like they are mainly providing the link to search for volunteer opportunities through United Way, which, for the sake of convenience, may be a great idea - on the same page as one can search for tickets. But as far as I can tell a motivated individual could just as well do a quick search online for volunteer opportunities and shop around for tickets…so it remains to be seen if this will have big ramifications for voluntourism or not…
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I like the idea, as far as it goes, but I had a nightmare experience with Cheaptickets.com, and I’m not the only one. After months of trying to get my money back, I had to ask my credit card company to investigate them in order to get the charge taken off my card–and that did work. Go to https://www.epinions.com/ and search for cheap tickets, and you’ll read some of the following: (1) their tickets are more expensive than one can find, for example, on Bootsnall; (2) their customer service is HORRIBLE; (3) they operate various scams including luring customers into paying for “services” they then don’t provide. Beware of these people. I hope someone more reliable takes up the voluntourism idea.