I travel perhaps 25,000-50,000 miles per year. When I started traveling in 1974, the method was pretty simple: find a travel agent that knew his or her chops at using the SABRE or other online access system to find inexpensive flights.
A savvy agent could cut through the airline pricing crap (which grew linearly worse over the years) to find reasonable flight schedules and prices. They earned their fees. Then they were cut out of the supply chain by the airlines in the 1990s. I felt for them, but worse, flyers were subsequently subjected to surcharges for using airline reservation systems by phone. The desire on the part of the airlines was to use their online systems.
Travelocity, Orbitz, and other online sites became very useful alternatives to the ensuing mess. I started using another site, Cheaptickets.com, as an even seemingly wiser alternative. Cheaptickets designed their software well, making shopping for flights comparatively easy. Over the past few years, I've purchased many tickets from them.
No more. My most recent experience has caused me to move on.
The flights I sought were from my home town to a city in Germany, a popular destination. I found flights using the Star Alliance carriers, my group of choice. The flight times were reasonable, and while the overall fare was just $172 round trip, the taxes brought the fare to $414. I went to buy the flight.
I was then presented with an error saying that the flight wasn't available at the stated price, and that the fare would now be $587. Below, on the same page, were other flight combinations for under $500, using the same exact flights.
Still worse, was the problem that the $414 combination still showed up when re-searching the same itinerary, subsequently producing the same error. Their computer system wasn't learning. I believe that this practice is often called 'bait and switch'.
Incredulous, I called their toll-free number. The results of my first call to them revealed that their interactive voice response system (IVR) wasn't designed with customer service in mind; indeed no option existed for 'customer service'. I choose a selection for New Flights reservations and was greeted with a reservation agent. I told this agent my story, and was transferred to 'someone in customer service'. I was transferred to a dialtone.
The second call found me transferred to a busy signal. The third call was answered by a reservation agent that said that I needed to restart my browser, or wait at least ten minutes before searching online again. If the Cheaptickets web pages have cached in my machine, perhaps it would explain the problem. Indeed the very next day, today, the erroneous flights are still available.
I obtained the flights at Orbitz, a better schedule, for only $4 more. Goodbye, Cheaptickets. Now my flights to CeBIT in March are confirmed, and I'll see you there.