Korean Job Discussion Forums

[movybuf]

I am a long time lurker, and this is my first post on here. Just to give you some idea, I have been here in Korea since 2002, and this is the first time anything has come up that I felt so strongly about that I had to warn the good people here on ESL Cafe.

So, this winter vacation, my wife and I (she is Korean by the way) made plans to go to Hong Kong for the week. We booked our tickets through an agency in Itaewon called Zed Tour. I had never heard about it before, but two of my coworkers booked their winter vacation tickets through there for thier trip to Thailand. They got a pretty good price, so we decided to give a call and see what they said.

Now, fast forward a few weeks. Now I am talking to the man (Okonkwo)who runs the agency. We are wondering about the price of the tickets, because we were given an estimate originally. Unfortunately, the schedule we were given was not at all what I had given initially. We were booked on some crazy flight leaving Hong Kong at something like 2:00am and returning to Incheon at 6:00am. So, I told them to change to the schedule we had originally given. So a few days later they changed the schedule and we paid for the tickets.

So now, fast forward again to December 25th. Our co-workers are leaving for Thailand immediately after work. That evening we get a call from them that they don't have any tickets. We think this is pretty strange and begin to worry about our tickets. So, we call Cathay Pacific to check on our flight. The man from the airline said everything was confimed. So we go to the airport the next day and check in with no problems. Before we leave a flight attendant comes to us to say we don't actually have any tickets. Also, we don't have any tickets to return to Korea. It turns out that our agent, Okonkwo, from Zed DIDN'T GIVE OUR MONEY FOR THE TICKETS TO THE AIRLINE! They contacted him and he said he would pay them the money for the ticket by 12:00 noon. They agreed and let us take the flight to Hong Kong. Unfortunately, he never paid for the tickets. We contacted him every day we were in Hong Kong (Six days) and each day he said he would fix the problem "tomorrow by 3:00." Everyday he said the same thing. He even told me that the people at Cathay Pacific were lying to me!!?? He was the one who was lying the entire time!! Finally, only a few hours before we had to come back here, we were forced to purchace our own tickets.

When we returned to Korea, we contacted him to tell him he needed to give us our money back. He actually said, "maybe"!!!??? Then my wife called him to tell him to pay is back and he began to yell and scream at her! He never said what happened to the money we gave him, or why he didn't give the money to the airline for our tickets. We asked him many time, but each time he ignored the question, and refused to say anything about it. We contacted the police and plan to do what we can to get our money back.

I want to warn anyone who wants to travel to NEVER use Zed Travel Agency. The place is run by a man named Okonkwo (오콘쿠). We now spent over 3,000,000 won on a trip that should have cost us 1,100,000 won. He is a theif and a liar. He took our money and our coworker's money and will not give it back.

[spliff]

Dude, go to his place of employment w/ the police and have him arrested on the spot...get your wife to do it! That's utter BS... Was this an "E- Ticket" arrangement?

[Captain Corea]

Good luck man.. I think I met that dude on the train once.

[Return Jones]

[Roch]

[quote="Return Jones"]

[Roch]

A South African Boer guy who was an English teacher in Seoul in Summer, 2005 told Emmanuel Okonkowo/Zed Okonkowo right to his forkin' face in front of me that he was going to kill him if he did not stop playin' with him.

My Canuck cuz and his K-Thing got scammed by him on a Hong Kong deal back in December, 2004.

[Roch]

Pakistani traders have told me that they want to bring him to justice. God, does this mean that they are going to Jihad his butt?

On the other hand, a possibly gay African-American who teaches the lingo at a uni in Seoul has done business with Emmanuel on at least two occasions without being ripped off. Maybe he likes to only screw whites out of their money?

[Kimchi Cha Cha]

I was only reading this thread a couple of minutes with one poster warning about Zed travel after they recently encountered a similar situation. Sounds like Zed are definitely worth avoiding not matter what prices they quote.

[Roch]

[Young FRANKenstein]

[spliff]

Havel A QUESTION AND THIS SEEMS AS GOOD A PLACE AS ANY TO POST IT. i JUST PURCHASED A TICKET THROUGH WHYPAYMORE, Korea. Anyway it's an e-ticket and they issued it through email. I download the ticket from an email and use it when checking in at the airport. Has anyone done his before ? This is my first time in handling a ticket this way and am curious about it.

[movybuf]

At the moment, my wife and I are sitting at a PC Bang in Itewon waiting for Okonkwo to return to his office. When he is there we are going to go to the police station in Itaewon and try to bring an officer with us. Our story seems remarkably similar to the one posted in the other thread given as a link. This is also the same thing that happened to our coworkers who tried to go to Thailand.

I am going to have my wife call the Korea Consumer Protection Board and see what kind of help they can offer us. Thank you for the link.

Also, does anybody know if travel agents need to be licensed to work here in Korea? If so, we want to contact the licensing department to complain and try to close his business down. Nobody should have to worry about this kind of thing. A liar and a theif should not be allowed to own a business.

[Captain Corea]

If it's the same guy I met (should hunt for that business card), then I think he's married to a Korean.

[canuckistan]

Sounds like ZED Travel could run a bit of a Ponzi scheme...blowing his customers' money on personal stuff and keeping his fingers crossed some other new pidgeons will dump enough cash into his lap for him to actually pay the airlines for the tickets of 1 or 2 imminently scheduled to travel.

It's clear he otherwise doesn't give a rat's ass whom he screws over.

[R-Seoul]