r/travel, I have been a follower of this sub for a while but have largely been a lurker and not contributed much. But here is the story. Four friends and I are university students from the USA and are currently studying and travelling in Peru. We have been in Lima for 5 days and our next stop was supposed to be in Cusco. As college students we are traveling on a small budget.
We decided to book plane tickets with Avianca airlines and the tickets we bought were $124 US dollars. This seemed like a good deal and spirits were high. One of the tickets was not getting a confirmation email so he started chatting with a representative online about it. During the chat the employee randomly added that there is a $178 charge for non Peruvians. This was NEVER told to us at any point during the ticket buying process. Maybe it was in the fine print or terms and conditions but we feel this is extremely unfair and should be mentioned. We all went through the buying process and nobody saw this charge. If we had known that it was going to cost roughly $300 dollars per ticket we would have taken the bus as opposed to flying.
For the past 24 hours our group has been freaking out because we simply do not have the money to pay for the fee. We have spent literally hours on the phone with Avianca customer service trying to find a service representative that speaks English or one that would hear us out. We are at a loss.
We're not sure if anyone has any advice on how we should proceed but any words of wisdom would help.