Orbitz and the old Bait and Switch

I've been playing around on Orbitz for days trying to come up with the lowest
airfare using NW, CO, or DL from LAS to TPA Dec 13 to 26. Seems everytime I
find a decent fare and try to book it I get a popup telling me the flights are
no longer available and to choose another flight (at a higher fare). Sometimes
I get all the way through the booking process including giving my meal/seat
preference AND providing my credit card number only to be told the flights are
no longer available, choose another flight (at a higher fare).

I called Orbitz and had a conversation with one of their supervisors
questioning why this was happening only to have her hang up on me when I
started asking questions she couldn't or wouldn't answer.

When I use a web site like Orbitz I assume I am being shown the lowest
AVAILABLE fare and not what it might have been if I had logged on a week, an
hour or even a minute earlier.

In my opinion Orbitz is pulling the old bait and switch by offering fares that
they know (or should know) are not really available then offering something
higher priced. If a car dealership pulled somethling like that, they would be
on the sorry end of a lawsuit yet Orbitz does it everyday with apparant
impunity.

Jerry in LAS

I've been playing around on Orbitz for days trying to come up with
the lowest airfare using NW, CO, or DL from LAS to TPA Dec 13 to
26. Seems everytime I find a decent fare and try to book it I get a
popup telling me the flights are no longer available and to choose
another flight (at a higher fare). Sometimes I get all the way
through the booking process including giving my meal/seat preference
AND providing my credit card number only to be told the flights are
no longer available, choose another flight (at a higher fare).

You're right -- it's showing fares that aren't available. But I know
enough about the way that Orbitz works to be confident that it's a
bug, not deliberate. I'll tell them to fix it.

Regards,
John Levine, , Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
"A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web

Jaybee727 wrote:
I've been playing around on Orbitz for days trying to come up with the lowest
airfare using NW, CO, or DL from LAS to TPA Dec 13 to 26. Seems everytime I
find a decent fare and try to book it I get a popup telling me the flights are
no longer available and to choose another flight (at a higher fare). Sometimes
I get all the way through the booking process including giving my meal/seat
preference AND providing my credit card number only to be told the flights are
no longer available, choose another flight (at a higher fare).

I called Orbitz and had a conversation with one of their supervisors
questioning why this was happening only to have her hang up on me when I
started asking questions she couldn't or wouldn't answer.

Why not just use another site?
Did you look at the websites of the airlines involved?

(Jaybee727) wrote in message ...

In my opinion Orbitz is pulling the old bait and switch by offering fares that
they know (or should know) are not really available then offering something
higher priced. If a car dealership pulled somethling like that, they would be
on the sorry end of a lawsuit yet Orbitz does it everyday with apparant
impunity.

Travelocity is doing exactly the same, or even more often. So do other
sites I have tried. Why are you sure it is specific to Orbitz?

jrk01

(Jaybee727) wrote in message ...
I've been playing around on Orbitz for days trying to come up with the lowest
airfare using NW, CO, or DL from LAS to TPA Dec 13 to 26. Seems everytime I
find a decent fare and try to book it I get a popup telling me the flights are
no longer available and to choose another flight (at a higher fare). Sometimes
I get all the way through the booking process including giving my meal/seat
preference AND providing my credit card number only to be told the flights are
no longer available, choose another flight (at a higher fare).
...snip

While this is frustrating, you will find this at most of the bigname
online booking sites. And, I think you could cut them a bit of slack
for two reasons.

1. There is some lag in getting the latest fares into the system,
which are then validated at the time of purchase. Not too much slack
here since they should be faster than they often are on being
up-to-date with this.

2. Since low priced fares are usually limited in qty for any
particular flight, the seat/fare that was available at the start of
the booking process could have dissappeared by the time you complete
the booking process. This can potentially happen anywhere, even
buying the ticket at the airlines counter in the airport if you have
them check several fare options before actually starting a
reservation.

Jaybee727 wrote:
In my opinion Orbitz is pulling the old bait and switch by offering fares that
they know (or should know) are not really available then offering something
higher priced.

The problem with web based systems designed to attract any/all passengers is
that they mislead them into thinking they are real reservation systems. They
are not. They are just travel agents.

These sites should all be designed to use clear terminology. For instance
"published airfares" instead of "available airfares". In trying to shield
casual users from real airline stuff, they become misleading. There should
have text such as "reservations are not garanteed until you have received a
confirmation / fares are not garanteed until the tickets have been issued".

However, since those travel agency web sites seem to compete on which one
offers the lowest fares, I can see the pressure for a web site to display all
published fares as if they were available. This way, those making comparative
analisys of web sites may ppublish concusions such as "web site X consistently
showed lower fares between A and B" and that is gold in terms of marketing.

1. There is some lag in getting the latest fares into the system,
which are then validated at the time of purchase.

True, but if the offerred fare is not available at noon and I clear my browser
and go back in 30 minutes asking for the same cities and dates and am once
again offerred the same low fare only to find out later on in the process that
it's not available again, that's wrong because they knew that fare fare was not
available when I called a half hour earlier. According to Orbitz they get fare
updates several times a day from the airlines. I just can't beleive that every
time I call I happen to catch them in the middle of an up-date

Since low priced fares are usually limited in qty for any
particular flight, the seat/fare that was available at the start of
the booking process could have dissappeared by the time you complete
the booking process.

I can't agree with that. I was a domestic/international res agent for one of
the big carriers for several years and only once did I ever lose a fare for a
customer because it was sold out from under me by another agent while I was in
the process of booking it. In that instance I had my support desk overide the
pricing system and sell the ticket at the fare I initially quoted the customer.
Yes it is possible, but not very likely.

My gripe is not the amount of the fare but the fact that customers spend a lot
of their time and effort to get that lower fare when it is really an illusion
perpetrated by(in this case) Orbitz

Deceptive advertising? I think so.
Illegal Business Practice? I don't know.

Jerry in LAS

According to Orbitz they get fare updates several times a day from the
airlines. I just can't beleive that every time I call I happen to catch them
in the middle of an up-date

I've recently had the same fare show available for a particular itinerary
over a period of more than a WEEK--and when I ask for it I keep getting told
it is unavailable, and offered alternatives which are also unavailable,
until the fare is up more than $100 from the original offer. Day after day
the same scenario. And none of the other online engines or the airline site
directly have this same mistake built into their system. I do think it is
a programming problem, but it is a whopper.

"Douglas W. Hoyt" wrote:
I've recently had the same fare show available for a particular itinerary
over a period of more than a WEEK--and when I ask for it I keep getting told
it is unavailable, and offered alternatives which are also unavailable,

If fairness, it could also be an airline bug with the airline publishing
availability of a fare, but when the travel agency checks with the airline to
confirm availability, then the airline says "sorry, no availability".

Or it could be a bug at the travel agency that doesn't apply the updates to
its own local database.

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.

Remember that many of these on-line travel agents were born in the dot com
boom and I am not sure if all of them have a viable business plan, especially
during this down period. Once they start to get desperate, they will take
desperate measures to appear to be at the top in order to have some other
travel agent fail.

I have had the same experience as Jaybee. The one plus of using
Orbitz, is that their "flexible" flight searching system is MUCH
better than Travelocities, in terms of choices of
flexibility--weekends, 4 day periods etc.--no international though.
On Travelcity, their display of "available" dates generally turns out
to be "unavailable". They(and Orbitz too) continue to list offers
which have expired days or even weeks earlier--forcing the searcher to
go on a wild goose chase.
I just finished doing a search on Orbitz for RT, LGA to LAS--US Air
came up as cheapest; I got to the point where I could confirm but
decided to see what US Air has on their site--the flights Orbtiz is
allowing me to book are "sold out".
I would guess that Orbtiz may get "blocks" of tickets from the various
carriers for exclusive sale. Could anyone confirm this?
(Jaybee727) wrote in message ...
I've been playing around on Orbitz for days trying to come up with the lowest
airfare using NW, CO, or DL from LAS to TPA Dec 13 to 26. Seems everytime I
find a decent fare and try to book it I get a popup telling me the flights are
no longer available and to choose another flight (at a higher fare). Sometimes
I get all the way through the booking process including giving my meal/seat
preference AND providing my credit card number only to be told the flights are
no longer available, choose another flight (at a higher fare).

I called Orbitz and had a conversation with one of their supervisors
questioning why this was happening only to have her hang up on me when I
started asking questions she couldn't or wouldn't answer.

When I use a web site like Orbitz I assume I am being shown the lowest
AVAILABLE fare and not what it might have been if I had logged on a week, an
hour or even a minute earlier.

In my opinion Orbitz is pulling the old bait and switch by offering fares that
they know (or should know) are not really available then offering something
higher priced. If a car dealership pulled somethling like that, they would be
on the sorry end of a lawsuit yet Orbitz does it everyday with apparant
impunity.

Jerry in LAS