Orbitz and the old Bait and Switch

When Orbitz did the same to me-I called and complained. They told me that they
only update their computers every 12 hours. That is they only check with the
airlines about availability twice a day. If a flight sells out after they've
last checked with the airline, the cusotmer gets screwed. Lousy system, imo.

the cusotmer gets screwed. Lousy system, imo.

I agree. For such a so-called hi-tech operation they sure seem to be in the
dark with their computer programming.

Seems half of their computer thinks the seats are there but the other half
knows they aren't. It's a shame they can't get them to work together.

I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt but I just can't do it this
time. I think they know full and well what they are doing and they are going to
continue doing it as long
as folks are willing to be hoodwinked.

Jerry in LAS

Jaybee727 wrote in message ...

Seems half of their computer thinks the seats are there but the other half
knows they aren't. It's a shame they can't get them to work together.


They most likely could, but to the detriment of response time.
All these systems work pretty much the same - the first part of the
transaction is finding published fares for the given itinerary. You want to
give a quick response to this, otherwise the customer will go away. The
availability search takes quite a bit longer, but the customer will likely
put up with it since he/she is 'interested' by that stage.

The older CRSs did it (and still do) the other way - check availability
first then worry about fares. But that's not the consumer model nowadays,
it's driven by price. I don't think ITA is any worse than Expedia,
Travelocity etc. and annoying as it may be, I wouldn't call it bait and
switch.

B.

Oops sorry, make that Orbitz not ITA. (Thread confusion).

In article ,
(Nathaniel Riesenberg) writes:

I have had the same experience as Jaybee.

Yes and I called and complained only to get a cheeky answer that things change
fast.
edwardseco

Edwardseco wrote:
Yes and I called and complained only to get a cheeky answer that things change
fast.

The only change that really occured was back in the arly 1990s when public CRS
like Eaasy Sabre started to get quick confirmation from many airlines (minutes
instead of hours to get the "OK" back.)

Those public CRSs have transformed into travel agencies (so they get the
comissions from issuing tickets). But the underlying phisolophy remains the
same: do a search based on off-line data, and when you've narrowed your
search, then you can send on-line transaction to airline to get real stuff.

The web travel agencies change this, they just tried to hide this by faking a
live interface that hides all the technical details. They are simply depriving
users of the information that can help users understand the real process, and
as such, the issues of off-line availability versus airline provided real-time availability.

Furthermore, because airlines do not necessarily provide the same inventory to
CRSs as they do to themselves, it clouds the issue of fares available on the
airline web site versus those from a travel agent web site which is based on
published CRS stuff.

It isn't that hard to learn about booking class, read (and understand)
availability listing and decode fare codes/fare rules. Yet, those travel
agency web sites try their darndest to hide all that valuable information from
users, preventing the later from learning how reservatiosn really work.

Banana Underpants wrote:
If the travel agency's sofware clearly doesn't check for availability, but it
used to check, then I would strongly suspect a real bait and switch scenario
where they knowingly disabled availability checking in order to give the
impression that the web site did consistently find lower fares.

My understanding is that those sites will cache results from previous
queries. For instance, if I check for fares from Cleveland to Minneapolis on
May 12, and it checks with the erservatioin database and finds that there
are three seats, then when you check a few hours later it may not bother
consulting the reservation database again (perhaps because there is a
per-query cost to them).

I guess it's possible that if you check frequently, and their caching
expiration algorithm is a little funky, that you could keep a bad data
point alive for a long time.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos and tales from around the world: http://travel.u.nu
Site remodeled 10-Sept-2003: Hundreds of new photos, easier navigation.

In article , Orgasmic residue
writes:

It isn't that hard to learn about booking class, read (and understand)
availability listing and decode fare codes/fare rules. Yet, those travel
agency web sites try their darndest to hide all that valuable information
from
users, preventing the later from learning how reservatiosn really work.


Amen,
edwardseco

(Edwardseco) wrote:

It isn't that hard to learn about booking class, read (and understand)
availability listing and decode fare codes/fare rules. Yet, those travel
agency web sites try their darndest to hide all that valuable information
from
users, preventing the later from learning how reservatiosn really work.


Amen,

EasySabre was the last web based system to allow access to the details. Even
their last version hid a lot of it though...

In article ,
(Nathaniel Riesenberg) wrote:


I would guess that Orbtiz may get "blocks" of tickets from the various
carriers for exclusive sale. Could anyone confirm this?

apparently that is the case