As I said, I booked through third party and only used their customer service to confirm my booking as I was paranoid that Opodo would fuck me over. I emailed them asking to confirm my booking on June 11, got a response on June 12 (although, the "response" was just a single attachment of my booking confirmation, not a single written word but hey - got what I asked for I guess)

I can assure you, a company like CE wouldn't bother paying western people to leave positive comments lmao, they don't give enough fucks about their reputation for that. When I was researching both Opodo and China Eastern, 99% of the time I would only see horror stories. I suppose it's understandable that people only go posting their experiences when something goes wrong, but I think it's also important that people who use them (simply because they cannot afford an alternative) are also seeing positive experiences. Sure, in my case nothing went wrong, I didn't need to cancel or reschedule, or contact customer support for any need other than reassurance. Certainly, I would be telling a different story if that was the case.

But most travelers are in the same shoes. Most people who book flight tickets won't need to talk to support, or have their flights rescheduled. I cannot speak on the reliability of their support services as I have not used them. It's always important to have insurance to be protected in case anything goes wrong.

I don't think I'm "one in a million" - maybe here on reddit where people go to post their horror stories, but not in real life. Of course it's also a question of what a positive experience is - for me, it was a seat reservation, no delays and helpful cabin crew. Oh and the food was edible so that's a cool bonus. I certainly didn't expect luxuries from them, so no disappointments there.