I plan to travel to the US from India this August. I'm sure I'll go and, while searching for cheap airfares online, I found most of the sites showing almost identical fares. A friend of me, however, suggested two sites-Travelocity and Hotwire and the fares here are ridiculously cheap. For example, the following search on Kayak.com
https://www.kayak.co.in/flights/CCU-SCE/2016-08-05
gives me a cheapest fare of INR 73720. The same search on Makemytrip.com gives an almost identical fare, but with Qatar Airways. I did not find any cheaper fare than this until I visited Travelocity, which gave me
a fare of around USD 905, which works out to around INR 60000. I got curious and searched for this particular flight on Kayak and the price is over INR 100000.
That apparently means that just booking via Travelocity or Hotwire (which also shows similar fares), I'm able to save at least INR 40000 on the best possible connection. My question is-what is the disadvantage of this booking? I believe that such a large discount must bring with it some disadvantages, but what are they precisely? One obvious thing is that Travelocity doesn't permit refunds on cancellation, but aside from that, are there any other disadvantages I should be wary of?
I'm in general wary of deals that seem too good, and this sure does so-firstly because it offers fares lot cheaper than common Indian websites like Makemytrip/Cleartrip and secondly because sites like Kayak don't show these fares at all.
On a related note, since Travelocity doesn't have an Indian version of their site, is it possible to book from the international site using international cards capable of paying in USD? Are there any hidden charges?