At a glance
This document forms part of the agreement between you and Zeptotravel LLC (“Zeptotravel”, “we”, “us”). It applies to every booking made through this website or through our telephone reservations desk.
Effective date: 28 August 2026 · Governing law: State of Delaware, USA · Questions: legal@zeptotravel.com
1. What these fees are
This page is our published price list for work our advisors do after a booking has been made and, in the case of air travel, after a ticket has been issued. Publishing it is deliberate: an agency fee that only appears once you are already stuck is the industry practice we exist to be an alternative to.
Two things to hold on to while you read the table. First, every amount here is an agency fee — it pays for our advisor’s time and for access to the ticketing systems and supplier trade desks needed to complete the task. Second, it is separate from and in addition to anything the supplier charges: an airline change penalty, a fare difference, a rental company amendment fee or its late-cancellation charge. We always state the two numbers separately so you can see which money goes where.
Amounts are shown as typical ranges in US dollars because the actual figure depends on the complexity of the task — a single-segment domestic exchange is not the same job as a five-sector international reissue involving two carriers and a fare recalculation. Your advisor quotes the exact amount before starting, and it is confirmed in writing.
2. The fee schedule
| Task | Typical agency fee | Basis | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Voluntary exchange or change of an issued air ticket | $35 – $85 | Per ticket | Lower end for a single-carrier domestic exchange; upper end for multi-sector international itineraries requiring manual fare recalculation. Airline change penalty and any fare difference are additional and are the airline’s charge. |
| Voluntary cancellation and refund processing | $35 – $75 | Per ticket or per booking | Covers filing the refund with the supplier, tracking it and chasing it to conclusion. Never charged inside a valid 24-hour risk-free window or on an involuntary refund. |
| Name correction on an issued ticket | $25 – $60 | Per ticket | Only some carriers permit a correction; where they require a cancel-and-rebook instead, the exchange fee applies and the airline’s charge is separate. Corrections raised within 24 hours of issue are usually free of our fee. |
| Seat assignment request or change after ticketing | $0 – $20 | Per passenger, per direction | Free where we can assign the seat directly in the reservation. Charged only where the carrier requires a manual request or a paid-seat purchase to be processed by an agent. The carrier’s seat charge is separate. |
| Baggage prepayment or allowance purchase | $15 – $30 | Per booking | Applies where the carrier does not allow self-service prepayment on an agency-issued ticket. The baggage charge itself is the carrier’s. |
| Special service request (wheelchair, medical clearance, service animal, meal, pet in cabin) | $0 – $25 | Per booking | Accessibility and mobility assistance requests are always free. A charge applies only to complex requests requiring documentation to be lodged and confirmed with the carrier’s medical desk. |
| Unaccompanied minor handling | $40 – $75 | Per child, per direction | Covers the carrier’s unaccompanied-minor paperwork, guardian details at both ends and confirmation of the carrier’s age and routing rules. The carrier’s own UM fee is separate and usually larger. |
| Group booking deposit handling (10+ travellers) | $75 – $250 | Per group booking | Covers group desk negotiation, deposit collection and reconciliation, name-list management and the final ticketing run. Quoted as a fixed amount in the group contract before any deposit is taken. |
| Duplicate documentation reissue (invoice, itinerary, receipt, visa support letter) | $0 – $20 | Per document | Free by email. A charge applies only to certified, notarised or posted hard copies, or to reconstructing documentation for travel completed more than 12 months ago. |
| After-hours emergency assistance (rebooking during a disruption outside normal working patterns) | $0 – $50 | Per incident | Free where the disruption is the supplier’s doing — cancellation, misconnection, irregular operations, weather. Charged only where an out-of-hours advisor is doing voluntary rebooking work at your request. |
3. What we never charge for
These are free, always, whether or not you end up booking with us:
- Quotes and price checks, including complex multi-city and multi-carrier pricing, and including telling you that a published online fare beats what we can offer.
- General questions — baggage allowances, fare rules, visa and entry requirements, seat maps, aircraft type, whether a connection is legal, what a rate plan actually permits.
- Schedule-change monitoring. We watch your itinerary and contact you when a carrier retimes or cancels a flight, and we assess whether the change is significant enough to trigger a refund entitlement.
- Involuntary rebooking. If the supplier cancels, downgrades or significantly changes your booking, protecting you onto an alternative is free.
- Cancellation inside the DOT 24-hour risk-free window on a qualifying air ticket.
- Filing a denied boarding, downgrade or delay compensation claim where you are entitled to it.
- Accessibility and mobility assistance requests, including wheelchair assistance under the Air Carrier Access Act, and adapted-vehicle, hand-control and accessible-pick-up checks with a rental supplier.
- Correcting our own error. If we made the mistake, fixing it is free and any supplier cost arising from it is ours, not yours.
4. When a fee is waived
A published fee is waived automatically where the supplier’s own waiver applies. Carriers issue waivers for named weather events, for airport and airspace closures, for major schedule changes, and for bereavement, medical and military circumstances under their published policies. When we file under a waiver, the airline’s penalty falls away, and we drop our fee at the same time; you should not pay us for work the supplier has already agreed to absorb. If you think a waiver should apply, say so — we check on every disruption file as a matter of routine, but a documented reason from you speeds it up.
5. Agency fee vs supplier penalty
The single most useful thing to understand about post-ticketing costs is that there are usually three numbers, not one:
- The fare difference — the gap between what you paid and what the new itinerary costs today, set by live inventory. This can be zero, or it can be the largest number on the page. It is the airline’s money.
- The supplier penalty — the change or cancellation fee in the fare rule or rate plan. Also the airline’s or supplier’s money.
- Our agency fee — the amount in the table above. Ours, and the only one we control.
We quote all three, labelled, before you decide. If an advisor ever gives you a single blended number without a breakdown, ask for one; that is our standard and you are entitled to hold us to it.
6. How and when a fee is quoted
Fees are quoted before work begins, verbally on the call and then in writing by email, and you can decline. Nothing is charged to your card for post-ticketing work without your specific authorisation for that task; a card on file for a booking is not authority to charge later service fees. Every fee appears as a separate line on the receipt, described as an agency service fee, so it is distinguishable on your statement and in your expense records.
If a task turns out to be materially more complex than quoted — a two-carrier reissue that has to be split, an involuntary component discovered mid-file — we stop and requote rather than charging the higher amount and explaining afterwards.
Nothing is added to your booking by default. Travel insurance, trip protection, seat assignments, checked bags, priority boarding, refundable-fare upgrades, rental counter extras such as prepaid fuel, satellite navigation, additional-driver registration or a damage waiver — none of these are ever placed on a booking unless you ask for them, and none appear pre-selected in anything we send you. Where an add-on is genuinely compulsory, such as a mandatory local charge collected at a rental counter, we identify it as compulsory and name who collects it. Every optional item is offered, priced and declined or accepted out loud on the call, and it is itemised on your confirmation, so a charge you did not agree to is visible immediately rather than discovered on a statement. If you find one, tell us and we reverse it — that is our error under the correcting-our-own-error rule above, so the reversal costs you nothing.
7. A worked example
Changing a non-refundable international ticket
You hold a New York–Lisbon return on a non-refundable published economy fare and want to move the return two days later. The rule permits a change for a penalty, and the new date prices into a higher booking class.
The quote would read: airline change penalty, as published in the fare rule — the airline’s charge. Fare difference to the new booking class — the airline’s charge. Zeptotravel exchange fee, $35 to $85 per ticket depending on complexity — our charge. Total payable stated as one figure with those three components itemised beneath it. If the airline had cancelled the flight instead, the penalty would disappear under involuntary rules and our fee would be zero.
Amounts are illustrative of how a quote is constructed, not a price for your itinerary. Live pricing depends on the fare rule filed for the ticket you actually hold.
8. Fees at the time of booking
This schedule covers post-ticketing work. Where a service fee applies to the original booking — most commonly on consolidator, negotiated and group fares — it is included in the total payable amount we quote you before you authorise payment and itemised on your confirmation, in line with the full-fare pricing described in Price Accuracy & Fare Rules. It is never added silently between the quote and the payment page.
9. Are our fees refundable
Service fees pay for work that has been done, and are generally not refundable once the work is complete. Three exceptions, applied without argument: we refund a fee charged in error; we refund a fee where the task did not complete and you got no benefit from it; and we refund a fee if it turns out a supplier waiver applied and we should have spotted it. Fees charged on an original booking that is cancelled inside a valid 24-hour risk-free window are refunded in full along with the fare. See the Refund & Cancellation Policy for the wider framework.
10. Changes to this schedule
We review this schedule periodically and will update it here, with a new effective date, when amounts change. The schedule in force on the date you authorise a task is the schedule that applies to that task — a later increase never applies retrospectively to work already agreed. Material increases are posted at least 30 days before they take effect. Questions about a specific fee: call +1-888-555-0119 and ask for the fee to be explained before you agree to it, or email support@zeptotravel.com.