Why Travelocity Sucks: Sorry the lowest Price has changed...

What the hell, you do a search, you get the price, you click on it,
and then it goes up $300. How annoying is this? What a waste of time.
Travelocity, you officially suck. SHAME ON YOU!!!! Why do you want to
alienate the people who are using your site? Why do you want to waste
our time? Why the bait ans switch? WHY WHY WHY!

On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 11:29:15 -0700, bertbarndoor
wrote:

What the hell, you do a search, you get the price, you click on it,
and then it goes up $300. How annoying is this? What a waste of time.
Travelocity, you officially suck. SHAME ON YOU!!!! Why do you want to
alienate the people who are using your site? Why do you want to waste
our time? Why the bait ans switch? WHY WHY WHY!

That happens on all the sites like Travelocity. Frequently,
they've just sold the last seat at the lower price.

BTW, what's the $300? Is it fees and taxes or an actual fare
change?

--
************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

Hatunen wrote in
:

BTW, what's the $300? Is it fees and taxes or an actual fare
change?

Probably the TSA surcharge.


--

"bertbarndoor" wrote:
What the hell, you do a search, you get the price, you click on it,
and then it goes up $300. How annoying is this? What a waste
of time. Travelocity, you officially suck. SHAME ON YOU!!!!
Why do you want to alienate the people who are using your site?
Why do you want to waste our time? Why the bait and switch?

You are more likely to find the fare you want if you use the
"flexible dates of travel" feature which show you on which days
(if any) seats at that price can be had.

Those low-ball fares are often either:
1. The fare was valid at one point in time, but no seats for that fare
code are available for your dates of travel. The fare is still on the
books, but the ~3~ seats alloted for it are gone;
2. For a multi-leg or R/T fare, seats are available for the 1st leg
only, not for connecting or return segments. Sometimes, only the
1st available fare-code gets quoted.
3. The fare has day-of-week, time-of-day, length-of-stay or
blackout date restrictions which your dates of travel violated.

bertbarndoor wrote:

What the hell, you do a search, you get the price, you click on it,
and then it goes up $300. How annoying is this? What a waste of time.
Travelocity, you officially suck. SHAME ON YOU!!!! Why do you want to
alienate the people who are using your site? Why do you want to waste
our time? Why the bait ans switch? WHY WHY WHY!


Do you think this is the only site this happens on?

Justin Case wrote:

Hatunen wrote in
:


BTW, what's the $300? Is it fees and taxes or an actual fare
change?


Probably the TSA surcharge.


Swiss Army kmife surcharge

This happens because the search is not performed with up-to-date real-time
data. It has been reported that it happens most frequently on Orbitz. It
is called "fare jumping".

bertbarndoor wrote:

: What the hell, you do a search, you get the price, you click on it,
: and then it goes up $300. How annoying is this? What a waste of time.

Yes it is frustrating, but travelocity is a global company, not your
neighborhood desk, and it is entirely possible that someone could have
bought those cheaper seats in the meantime.

In message Newbie
wrote:

bertbarndoor wrote:

: What the hell, you do a search, you get the price, you click on it,
: and then it goes up $300. How annoying is this? What a waste of time.

Yes it is frustrating, but travelocity is a global company, not your
neighborhood desk, and it is entirely possible that someone could have
bought those cheaper seats in the meantime.

I've also seen it on routes where I am fairly certain that no one else
was buying -- I tend to book flights at 3 or 4 in the morning, and if
you use the "flexible dates" feature you can sometimes see searches that
were performed recently.

If there is no fare on a date, go do the search manually then go back to
the flexible dates and notice that the price now appears.

I've had cases where there was no other details on a given date until I
did a query for that specific date, then attempted to make a purchase
and gotten the "lowest price has changed", then seen the lowest price
back again a few hours later. Again, attempting to buy shows that it
has changed.

Personally, I think they're showing prices they know likely won't go
through just to keep eyeballs on their site.

--
You can get more with a kind word and a 2x4 than just a kind word.

DevilsPGD wrote:
Personally, I think they're showing prices they know likely won't go
through just to keep eyeballs on their site.


This goes all the way back to EaasySabre. They display published fares
received in batch from airlines. Only once you book do they try to
confirm availability and then tell you that there are no available seats
left. It is a fact of life for mass market systems with large volumes of
queries that will never yield a booking.

Real travel agents can interrogate available fares on a route on a date
before starting booking process. The dumbed down web based travel
agencies don't do that since it would cost them way too much to have
live inventory queries from many many airlines everytime some user
wanted an idea of fares between A and B.

And it gets worse when they have those "my dates are flexible" since the
web based software will then show you any/all fares published on that
route in roughly the same time period even though even the batch updates
may show all seats usable for a fare being sold out on the date you want.

Once you understand how these systems work, then you understand why they
come to you at the last minute with a "sorry that fare isn't available".