So the Mrs. and I are planning on a trip to Japan for June of this year. I received a tip to take a look at the deals found on said travel agency and I was impressed. I made a cursory research on the legitimacy of the service and found that it does deliver. I took the dive and got myself booked--with an additional fee to cancel and have my deposit fully refunded. Since then I've been looking more and more into their services and find that way too many reviews are overwhelmingly negative. The corresponding Reddit board screams "don't do it!" (though most of the posts there are a bit dated, admittedly)
And now that I'm finally a member of this fine community at Tildes, I figured that I'd ask you kind people for your feedback and discussion. What do you all say? Is there any consensus on any particular travel agency? Or is it best that I engage in the grunt work to book all the hotels ahead of time? We're looking to hit Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto at the very least. My total cost so far is less than $5000 for 9 days, FYI. And travelling from USA, if that makes any difference.
This is my first post on Tildes prompting discussion, btw. Glad to be here! 🤞

Ever since I moved to a place with an airport nearby, I've been wondering about those flight deal sites -- the ones like Scott's Cheap Flights, Mighty Travels, Thrifty Traveler, Faredrop, Secret Flying, Dollar Flight Club, etc (those are just the ones I found off a Reddit thread on r/TravelHacks).
Has anyone here had any experience with these paid services?

Also, does anyone know of a way I can search for a start and end point, and find other airports nearby to fly out of for much cheaper? I remember having used such a site earlier but cannot for the life of me remember its name now :-(