Illegal agency (however suspended by ASAE) sold cheap trips to Brazilians residing in Portugal. The surgical problems after
Several Brazilians worked in Portugal to carry out the activity by successive residents in Brazil, after an alleged agency based in Lisbon had not been officially registered to carry out an activity, despite operating in the capital for more than two years. years old .
The Brazilian community – through cheap air tickets – to sell the popular payment to Brazil and to facilitate the payment to the popular payment together. However, when doing check in, customers found that the invitations were not valid or were not even paid for by the company, being given at the last minute alternatives to follow different paths after several days, without the security of being able to climb trips that also included several. All contacts between clients and the agency were made via WhatsApp and submissions were made exclusively through the MB Way application.
At issue is the travel agency Renata & Oliveira, based at Rua da Misericórdia, which advertises itself on Facebook and Instagram as Viagens Radicais RVT. He works as the ‘arm’ in Portugal of a company in Brazil, Clj Viagens e Turismo, to whom visas were used via WhatsApp messages when problems arose before boarding.
“This is not a travel agency, it is an illegal company that tells its customers that it is a travel agency, without being one”, emphasizes Pedro Costa Ferreira, president of the Portuguese Association of Travel and Tourism Agencies (APAVT), recalling that the sector’s activity is “very regulated” and that the “first act” is to have the National Registry of Travel and Tourism Agencies (RNAVT) certified by Turismo de Portugal. “If the company doesn’t have it, it’s not a travel agency”, resume.
Turismo de Portugal confirmed that this agency has no official registration to be able to carry out activity in the country, referring the process to the Food and Economic Security Authority (ASAE), which is responsible for monitoring this type of cases. Contacted by Expresso, ASAE reported that the company was already the subject of an administrative offense process this year for having RNAVT: the investigation is not at the investigation stage and prevents an activity until its conclusion. It became pure that it was the operation of a travel agency in Brazil, which, in order to have the right to register, now having the company present its defense.
This is the 17th administrative offense process initiated by ASAE since the beginning of 2021 against travel agencies, for several reasons, including the lack of official registration, and which resulted in 277 inspections of the sector.
In addition to being a travel agency, Renata & Oliveira – which operates in Lisbon’s downtown, September 2019 – promotes itself on the internet as a provider of a series of services, such as home delivery of food, tourist tours on foot, using vehicles or ” uncharacterized” from the TVDE platform (aka Uber), along with hotel reservations, restaurants, car rentals, visits to museums and “theatrical events”, fairs or congresses, among others.
Expresso contacted an agency several times but was unable to respond with a few times, which will be absent from the country. According to telephone information transferred by an employee, does not have RNAVT as it is a “service provider”. According to the Portuguese, only registered travel service agencies and airlines can sell plane tickets, they did not remain covered by “service providers by name”. About this case, APAVT is clear: “They operate in the purest of illegalities”.
Family prevented from spending Christmas in Brazil went back in the middle of the trip: “We were exhausted”
A family of Brazilians residing in Portugal, composed of four people, tells Expresso the experience they had with this agency. In February 2021, they purchased tickets from Lisbon to Curitiba, with a stopover in São Paulo, departing on December 6, 2021 and returning on January 7, 2022. The trip (very much anticipated, as they had not been to Brazil for three years ) totaled 709 euros, with the rest having another ten down payments of two thousand euros.
The day before, an agency was jealous of a WhatsApp message informing that the flight the next day, from Lisbon to São Paulo (by Air Europa) had been canceled due to covid-19, and would be restored on 8 December. To find out what had happened, the family went to Lisbon Airport and joined the airline that the flight had been cancelled, the tickets had not been paid for. “It was lie after lie”, they claim.
They were taken to São Paulo, with a stopover in Madrid, on an Air Europa flight that left Lisbon on December 8th. Availability to the valid company”: “It has confirmation that a trip was not delivered, which was not done with the request that the trip was carried out request to be suspicious and have documents to verify that there was no fraud”.
They were offered two options: flights to Brazil on December 12, or a refund. Having opted for the valid information later, the family received that they could travel on December 8, but when they arrived at ‘December’ those received did not arrive at ‘December’. got it in extremis fly to Madrid: “We were the last ones to enter the door”, they say.
Arrived in Madrid, much less a full day to São Paulo, and even less a full day to Curitiba. They had to spend a night in the Spanish capital, with a promise of flights for the next day, which they later found were not valid or safe for their return. “We then decided to go to Lisbon on our own and buy notes. running out”.
In the first request for a refund, they were insulted by messengers: “They said that they took over with us, and that I was best”. When they went to the agency in person, they were paid in cash, including expenses in Madrid. “This does not erase what we went through, the undoing of the holidays we dreamed of all year to see our family back in Brazil”, he concludes.
“We realized that ours was not the first case, and that this agency takes advantage of the vulnerability of Brazilian emigrants: it puts them on the flights that it finds the cheapest prices, does not respect what is agreed, takes advantage of the fact that they often do not have forms of complaining have occurred, out of fear or simply not knowing who to turn to about what to do”.
Deferred flights, tickets not valid when boarding. “Our mental health was very shaken”
Luana (fictitious name of a client, who does not identify herself) also uses the same agency, “recommended by friends”, in order to buy tickets for her mother-in-law, for October 1, from Lisbon to São Paulo and on to Cuiabá , through the Blue company. Tickets received by RVT cost 299 euros. “The price was very good”, she admits.
no time do check in, tickets not valid by “payment cancellation” on the agency side. “The first excuse is that the flight to Madrid had been canceled and the alternative presented was to travel for several days or buy a new ticket. The situation was repeated, until Luana’s mother-in-law succeeded on October 6 “after a lot of struggle and a lot of threat”.
Luana guarantees that she will not measure again in another similar situation, despite the cheap prices and ease of payment. “Our mental health was very shaken. It took me a week to recover,” she confesses.
Maria Teresa (fictitious name) is also “deceived” by the agency, from which she bought a ticket “well in advance, in April”, to go in July from Lisbon to São Paulo, continuing on to Maringá.
When he arrived in Madrid for a stopover on an Air Europa flight, he had the first problems: instead of waiting 45 minutes, he had to stay at the airport all day. Before taking the flight to São Paulo, the telephone indication that “I had to go to Maringá another way”, because the flight was cancelled. “Actually, the agency had not even purchased the flight from São Paulo to Maringá”, he accuses.
As a result, her brother had to travel more than 1200 kilometers, counting round trips, to take her and her son to Maringá, at an estimated cost of 900 reais [cerca de 150 euros], of which there was “no refund”. On his return, in August, “the problem was bigger”: the ticket was not valid and, at the Air Europa desk, he was told that the reservation was made for October. That night, he had to sleep at a relative’s house and ended up being able to travel the next day, through TAP. The trip cost 795 euros, but Maria Teresa would have preferred “to have paid more and gone in peace”.
What else is the agency lacking in humanity”: “It was horrible how they treated me, and when they looked for alternatives for the non-valid points it was as if they were always doing me a favor”.
APAVT advice to avoid travel problems
Not ‘eating this cat in a hare’ – that is, not confusing an agency of name companies” with trips that operate “worthily illegally – is the first advice of APAVT. Otherwise, and however cheap it may be to resort to an opinion, consumers may face various problems and without being able to resort to support.
“The first is that people certify that the company holds the National Register of Travel and Tourism Agencies (RNA on the Turismo de Portugal page), which is public and appears on the Turismo de Portugal page”, emphasizes Pedro Ferreira, president of APAVT
In a ‘second degree of confidence’, Pedro Costa Ferreira recalls that he is associated with APAVT to the defenders of a case Ombudsman: it is a judgment center recognized by DECO, which treats those with greater speed than what is usual in courts”.
Cases like the previous ones were expected to be a “flavor” for AVT, which stresses that, along with the officials, as agencies that feel-competitive are the first to feel like they are registered” by them. The association’s president urges ASAE to keep an eye on those who “exercise it illegally”, harming people and giving the sector a bad name.