Beware of a bad work ethic. A friend referred me to Break-Away Travel to help plan a trip to South America. I had already done a lot of work on the possible dates, locations, hotels and eco lodges I was considering. I gave my budget, information and time frame, to one of the agents and she said she could get it done.
A few days after first contacting Break-Away Travel, I hadn't heard anything back. I called and found the agent was on vacation, which was not a big deal. When I got into contact with her a couple days later, she assured me she could have the trip booked by the end of the following week. As Friday approached, I again was not contacted at all by the agent. I didn't know which eco lodges she was looking at, what dates I'd be leaving/returning or any information. She said she was working with a third party agent to book everything and once she heard from him, she would let me know.
Again I was not contacted after that, and I had to make several phone calls to the company and two other agents to find out that the agent I was working with was out. She hadn't told me, had not passed any of my information on to one of the other agents to follow up, and apparently had done no more work, because once I got in touch with her, she had no information at all about the trip.
Finally, at 10 pm on the Friday that she said she could have everything done, she emailed me the quote from the third party agent, which was double my budget. She never let me know the estimate would be for this much, probably because she didn't know anything about my trip because she hadn't done any of the work.
I booked the trip myself for $5,000 less, but she wasted two weeks of my time and caused an incredible amount of confusion and frustration. The Break-Away Travel agent should have kept in better contact with me, and should have been more proactive about what was going on and her time away. I've never used a travel agent before, and this was the worst possible experience.