So, OneGo Cancelled My Subscription

Earlier this month, TPG Associate Editor Emily McNutt signed up to try out the new "unlimited flying" app, OneGo. But things came to an end earlier than expected when OneGo said they would be cancelling the subscription.

Earlier this month, the service OneGo, also known as the “unlimited flying” app, took the traveling world by storm. It flaunted unlimited traveling, which, upon further research, was anything but accurate. But, we wanted to try it out, so I signed up for a month-long subscription and booked my first four segments. Everything went great.

I got back to New York, ready to book my next round of flights when I realized I wasn't able to book my selected flight. And then I got the call — OneGo was canceling my subscription.

Now, while it's disappointing and was totally unexpected, that’s the whole reason we wanted to try it out — so you, our readers, wouldn’t have to spend the same amount of money ($2,795 for my package) doing it yourself. And as it turns out, it didn’t work as planned after all.

What Happened?

When I got back to New York after my first round of four segments (stay tuned for a full trip recap coming soon!), I was ready to book my next four one-way trips — I had it all planned out. But because I was in the middle of a status challenge with American Airlines, I really only wanted to fly with AA.

I logged on and attempted to book my first flight for a Friday (from New York to Miami). Everything seemed fine. I was able to select the date, the specific flight, and my AAdvantage number even showed up on the final screen before final confirmation. However, when I clicked the final confirm button, I got an error message reading “Oops…Service not available.”

I tried again — no luck. So I called the OneGo customer service line and got ahold of the same representative who I had spoken to before and was always extremely helpful (more on that later). She told me to email her and she would send it off to the technical support team who would look into it.

Less than an hour later, I got an email back from OneGo saying I was getting the error message because the flight was completely booked. Strange, because Google Flights was showing there was plenty of room left on the flight.

About 20 minutes later and before I could even respond, she emailed me again, telling me that OneGo was having some issues they had not seen before — a bug in its system that the technical support team was working hard to fix. She then called me to explain the situation in further detail, and suggested that I take a United, Delta or JetBlue flight instead, as OneGo wasn’t having issues with its other carriers. Although it wouldn’t be an issue for a couple flights, as I was planning on taking one flight on each of the other carriers to see how it worked, I explained I was looking to book AA flights because of my ongoing status challenge in the future.

She then told me, as per my request, that OneGo would extend my membership for one week to make up for the inconvenience of not being able to book AA flights — perfect! I was more than happy to settle with that.

Then, I checked my OneGo interface to see that I had 10 segments (!!) in my available booking section. I didn’t touch it, as I figured OneGo was playing around with the interface and their system on the backend. When my total went back down to four available segments, I booked a flight for the following Friday to New Orleans on Delta (just to refrain from losing a day of potential flights).

The following day, I emailed the representative again and she said they were still working on it and that my subscription had been extended until March 26 — it was originally supposed to end March 9. This was great news, as I'm going to be traveling March 10-19 and wouldn't be able to use the app during that time.

That same day, I got a call from another representative at OneGo. He explained to me — very kindly — that the problem I was having was an unforeseen issue on the backend and I had uncovered a glitch in the coding system with American Airlines. He told me I was one of OneGo's first customers — in fact, one of the first 10 — and they were still in beta testing. For a service that had launched publicly just more than one week before, it’s not all that surprising there was a bug. And although they were hoping to resolve the issue as soon as possible, they didn’t want me to not have the full OneGo experience.

He was very apologetic, explaining that this was not how they wanted customers to be treated — if they want to book American flights, they should be able to. So, he said he talked with the CEO of OneGo, Paulius, who said that OneGo would be canceling my subscription and issuing a full refund — OK. But it didn’t stop there — OneGo then offered to let me try the app again free of charge when it’s back up and running how it’s supposed to. A pretty good deal, though I was still a bit bummed that my subscription would be ending so suddenly.

He explained that because they were offering a full refund, they had paid for my first round of flights completely out of pocket — nearly $1,000 in total. However, he said my account was going to be suspended immediately — I couldn’t book any more flights and the flight I had booked the day prior to New Orleans was going to be voided. In all, I think it was a fair — albeit unfortunate — deal in that they were willing to let me try the app again free of charge when it's working correctly.

Customer Service

Although right off the bat, I came to the conclusion that unless you really put a lot of time into planning and have an extremely flexible schedule, there’s no way that OneGo is a good deal. However, that does not take away from the fact that OneGo’s customer service has been superb throughout this entire incident. The customer service representative whom I’ve talked with several times now has been the most helpful and kind person and has been able to make this disappointing situation easier to handle.

Even on the backend, people at OneGo have been both incredibly helpful and professional. All of my phone calls have been answered — the longest wait time I had was around four minutes — and all of my emails have been addressed in an extremely timely manner. If all travel customer service departments were this easy to deal with, flying would be completely different — imagine not having to dread calling customer service to get an unfriendly agent after waiting on hold for extended periods of time.

Bottom Line

Although unfortunate, as I was looking forward to testing out the product for its entirety, I’m pleased with the outcome. And, I have to say, it was somewhat expected — a brand new service that has been covered by news outlets everywhere because of its simplicity and "unlimited flying" marketing was probably going to have some issues — as nearly all services do when they’re brand new.

That being said, I wish I would have been given more warning. Once I was told that I would have my subscription extended, I booked a flight and started making more travel plans. To be told the next day without warning that my account was going to be suspended, effective immediately, and that the flight I had already booked was going to be voided was a bit of a shock. Thankfully, I hadn't made any nonrefundable plans in New Orleans, as that would have been an issue.

Still, I'm glad that I got to experience OneGo, and I'm looking forward to trying it again once the kinks have been worked out. We’ll keep you updated on any further developments with OneGo, and hope this helps you in your decision of whether or not to try the service any time soon.