Travelocity Charges More When People are Dying

Travelocity Charges More When People are Dying


My wife is a senior citizen. My wife's younger sister is dying. My
wife needs to get from New Jersey to Atlanta TODAY.

It's Sunday, so our travel agent is closed.

I tried Travelocity. Here is an account of what happened.


I use Firefox and Windows 2000 SP4. Javascript was enabled.

At 11:00 am 08/12/2007 (Sunday) I checked Travelocity for a direct
flight from Newark (EWR) to Atlanta. I found Continental flight 1155
at 5:45 pm available with four seats including an aisle seat (seniors
need to go to the bathroom frequently). I attempted to book the flight
at 11:10am. The booking proceeded all the way through to charging my
credit card and stopped at a screen that said: "Please Wait... Do not
press Back or Stop..."

At 11:25am (after 15 minutes of waiting) I called the customer service
number. "Paul" (with an Indian subcontinent accent) checked and
determined that the transaction did not go through. He said to start
over in Internet Explorer.

At 11:30am I re-entered the same information and found that there was
only one seat left (not an aisle seat), so I booked it. The price was
now $321, an increase of $24.

I am not a happy traveler. I really don't know whether:

( ) Travelocity charges more if it can't successfully book a seat the
first time.
( ) Travelocity charges more if it's the last seat on the airplane
( ) Travelocity has an incompetent Information Technology department
( ) Travelocity just screwed up
( ) Continental changed prices between 11:10am and 11:30am
( ) None of the above: there was some other cause.

I really don't care. I won't be using Travelocity again. Your mileage
may vary.

Jim Winer
firebird (dash) jmw (at-symbol) comcast (period) net
Please use this address. The return address is munged to avoid spam.

On Aug 12, 1:00 pm, wrote:
Travelocity Charges More When People are Dying

My wife is a senior citizen. My wife's younger sister is dying. My
wife needs to get from New Jersey to Atlanta TODAY.

1) Last-minute tickets are always the highest priced, regardless of
the
reason behind the flight.

2) There are millions of people that fly yearly in this country.
One of the effects is minute-by-minute changes in seating
arrangements.
Since the web is a convenient (but nowhere near 100% reliable) way to
book
reservations, it is more than likely that misdirected or dropped
data packets, or a server or client freeze or overload will result in
losing seats for you.

3) Someone figured out that computers, when fed a decent program, can
make moment-by-moment changes in the costs of a seat to maximize
profit and
cover the costs of the flight. While your browser was busy futzing
with the
Internet and the chain of machines that attempted (and failed) to
secure your
reservation, either demand went up for the remaining seats on the
flight,
or someone with a discount booked other seats (forcing a cost change
for the
remaining seats).

It's Sunday, so our travel agent is closed.

You can bet that anybody's reservation request via some other travel
agent, customer
service rep., or electronic connection to a flight reservervation
system can
potentially change the nature of your reservation until the moment
your reservation is
secured.

I really don't care. I won't be using Travelocity again. Your mileage
may vary.

It won't end with Travelocity.


-d

Thats because you are going the wrong way about it. Get a letter from the
hospital or the doctor and go directly to the airport. Buy your ticket at
the ticket counter and they will give you the needed discount.

Travelocity is an online booking agent and therefore they cannot offer you
discounts for such reasons.

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ups.com...
On Aug 12, 1:00 pm, wrote:
Travelocity Charges More When People are Dying

My wife is a senior citizen. My wife's younger sister is dying. My
wife needs to get from New Jersey to Atlanta TODAY.

1) Last-minute tickets are always the highest priced, regardless of
the
reason behind the flight.

2) There are millions of people that fly yearly in this country.
One of the effects is minute-by-minute changes in seating
arrangements.
Since the web is a convenient (but nowhere near 100% reliable) way to
book
reservations, it is more than likely that misdirected or dropped
data packets, or a server or client freeze or overload will result in
losing seats for you.

3) Someone figured out that computers, when fed a decent program, can
make moment-by-moment changes in the costs of a seat to maximize
profit and
cover the costs of the flight. While your browser was busy futzing
with the
Internet and the chain of machines that attempted (and failed) to
secure your
reservation, either demand went up for the remaining seats on the
flight,
or someone with a discount booked other seats (forcing a cost change
for the
remaining seats).

It's Sunday, so our travel agent is closed.

You can bet that anybody's reservation request via some other travel
agent, customer
service rep., or electronic connection to a flight reservervation
system can
potentially change the nature of your reservation until the moment
your reservation is
secured.

I really don't care. I won't be using Travelocity again. Your mileage
may vary.

It won't end with Travelocity.


-d