I’ve been traveling to film hyraxes and other unique animals for the last year. And in doing so, I try to reinvest my profits into helping the animals and their conservation around the world. The only problem is that my journeys to parts of the world can be upwards of 35 hours! I usually travel economy and those journeys can be taxing.

So when I made a small unexpected profit around Christmas time of 2025, I decided to use some of that money to try out the world of Business Class travel. I opened up KAYAK. I found a pretty good deal on round trip tickets that could stop in London, stay in Kenya to visit a friend of mine (SquiggytheHyrax), and then stay at DAKTARI in South Africa. Economy tickets were around $2,500 but for $6,500, I could upgrade that to business class through the Arangrant Travel Agency!

Imagine that you wake up late, or find yourself rushing to the airport for an early flight. It could happen to anyone. What happens with most booking agencies or airlines? They will offer complementary changes or make modifications to your flights for reasonable fees if you miss your flight to give you peace of mind. My first learning experience with Arangrant was when I found myself in a situation like this and believed that they would be like most agencies or airlines.

When I thought I might miss my flight, I asked the British Airways staff, who recommended that I should wait and call Arangrant if it becomes more apparent that I may not make it on time. That’s what I did. The agent on duty was extremely nice and told me that I could keep that ticket open for a later date. It was great news! Or at least I thought it was. I naively booked a replacement economy round trip flight through them.

Little did I know that they did not even contact British Airways during that moment. According to the British Airways customer service, this lack of contact regarding my ticket made them mark it as a no-show with no redemption value.

And worse, when I finally found time to arrange for that ticket redemption, Arangrant must have forgotten they lied about that since they gave me some options. This was all the way into July at this point.

This seems like a great email, right? But after I followed up regarding this and other options, they suddenly decided to change their mind! I received this very different email the next day.

In other words, they did not actually give me the credit or opened tickets they promised months ago. I thought that it was a strange clerical error before realizing why they might be making these false promises to customers who want to change their flights: Credit card chargebacks.

Arangrant has a pretty sizable chunk of its Terms and Services dedicated to credit card chargebacks and how they will deduct the fees from the customer conducting said chargeback. They really don’t like chargebacks. So when I went to initiate one myself, the investigators talked with me for a while and eventually sent me this official letter:

It seems possible that Arangrant might make false promises to customers without even contacting the airlines so as to drag out charges until they are invalid for chargeback. The fact that they had me believe that I had ticket credit all the way until July seems like an extremely deceptive practice that allows them to avoid repercussions for their lack of action.

Alternatively, imagine that you book with Arangrant and make sure that you’ve done all your due diligence ahead of time! You’ll arrive to the airport hours early, you’ll make sure your luggage is all perfect, and you planned for your whole family to wrap everything up just in time? What happens if the airline itself cannot complete one of your flights?

After rebooking with Arangrant my flight to South Africa went well. However, just days before my return home, they told me that the flight was cancelled. I called them and was told that I had no option for rebooking in any way, even several days later. I had to either accept the refund on a single leg (my return leg), or get absolutely nothing.

I called every other booking agency and airline I could, only to find that my only nearby options were business class flights that cost over $7,000 per ticket. I had no choice since I couldn’t stay in South Africa forever, but I couldn’t imagine how much worse it would have been if I wasn’t traveling alone. Imagine having to buy last second business class tickets for a whole family!

While Arangrant boasts low ticket prices and some very robust rankings on TripAdvisor, they are a very unreliable travel agency in practice. They seem to instigate some extremely deceitful tactics to keep your money through any means necessary and are more than happy to leave you abandoned overseas rather than take a loss to bring you home.

I’ve traveled pretty extensively over the last year (to South Africa twice, Kenya, the UK, Australia, Boston, and France), and all of the issues I’ve had throughout all of those flights was thanks to Arangrant.