Third Party Booking Didn't Book Return Flight for Daughter!
First off, let me just give a quick disclaimer; I am a former hotel night auditor, current admin assistant for a specialty department with a large medical school. This happened a few years ago, and everything did get resolved (thank goodness!). This incident is another reason why I tell people to use caution when booking anything through third parties.
The medical school I work for has a contract with a travel agency. We have to book through the travel agency for any flights. Normally, it's a pretty smooth process, and the employees insurance and workers comp information is automatically tied to the bookings in case anything were to happen. However, for international flights, you need to call the agency directly to book instead of using the website. You also need to call directly if you need to book a flight for a spouse or child so that they can charge that ticket to their personal card instead of the school. Keep both of those in mind because that'll be important later.
One of my doctors, we'll call them K, was going to a conference in Australia (we're in the US). K was traveling with their child, who we'll call S and was a teenager. K called the agency, booked both sets of flights, and charges went through. Jump ahead to the scheduled return flight, and.....the airline can't find S's flight information in their system. They have the ticket in for K, but the information for S is nowhere to be found. Que a very frantic parent calling me in a panic trying to figure out what is going on (understandably so!). I'm able to look in K's profile with the agency, and I saw that their ticket was issued....but the ticket for S was never processed. K did get the charge on their card, but the agency never issued the ticket or sent the information to the airline. Unfortunately, because we had to use a third party, the airline couldn't do much. However, luckily, we got a hold of one of the travel agency managers who quickly fixed the issue with no charge to the school or to K (this is why you keep that third party customer service line on hand!). Its important to note that at this point, booking a same day or next day return flight would have been close to $10,000.
S did end up, however, having to fly alone on a different flight than their parents. Which left all of us furious. Thank goodness S wasn't going to be stuck in a foreign country, but that was a reeeeaaallly close call. I've been told that this issue was escalated to the higher ups in the school, and there may or may not have been warnings given to the agency that if something like this were to happen again, the contract would need to be renegotiated.