Ripped off by Aer Lingus.com

Snake Plisken

Dont know if this is the right or wrong forum, but wanted to warn as many folks and make them aware of this fix.
Few months back I was booking flights for next October for a wedding in Spain I decided on the dates to fly and I was going through the online booking process, I was doing this in work and as I was entering the credit card details, someone came in for a chat, and my booking session timed out..When I went back in the price on the flights had jumped 100%!!!!! I said Fek that and found cheaper flights with Iberia. Just thought maybe the cheapseats had gone, but thought it was a bit strange for this to happen 6 months in advance.
Anyway two weeks ago we had to go to Spain Urgently due to a death in the family, I had already tickets booked for two members of the family and needed to change the flight dates and book a flight for myself, Aer Lingus, now have an option of changing the flight for a 25Euro fee per ticket, I went in and the aerlingus system confirmed a fee of 50 Euros and again I got to the credit card details screen, at the same time I had been holding for Customer Service to confirn that I could book for the same day, the girl, said I could book for the same day but not through the website I would have to book it through, as it was an emergency I gave her my details and she charged me a 20Euro handling fee, this took 5 mins to confirm details etc, when I went back to the website to enter the credit card details the session had timed out and when I re-entered the flights the fee had jumped from 50 to 200EUROS :mad: I rang back customer services and got some smart arse who said it would be 239 Euros through him I said thanks but no thanks :mad: And bit the bullett and paid the monies.
Looks like I was ripped off on both accounts 1) I have since found out that I could have booked the flight online saving myself the commission. 2) aerlingus.com seems to recognise your ip address and if your in the middle of booking and you go back in it recognises your ip address and increases the cost of the flights. And before you ask there where plenty of free seats on the flight!

Who can I complain to? And if your booking make sure you finish the transaction!
Cheers
Snake :mad:

EKRIUQ

Although I sympathise with your problem, it was your decision to book the flights and you had the option to pull out at any time. On both occasions you had got prices that were favourable but you let the session expire and thus lost the cheap flights.

Snake Plisken

Not when there is a death in the Family and you have to be there on that particular date

goldenbrown

I suspect ryanair recognizes your ip and adjusts upwards if you hover and come back in within an hour to book , they just charged 10 euros each way for a 6 week old to sit on his mothers lap to manchester what a bunch of wretches :cool:

Snake Plisken

Goldenbrown I suspect your right it looks like its a common practice in low cost airlines

youcancallmeal

had this problem myself. Me and my friend were booking a flight at the same time, both on different computers. We were talking to each other on the phone and we both checked the exact same flights, he booked first and when i went to book i realised i entered something wrong so i returned to the beginning. Low and behold when i went to book again seconds later it had gone up 20euro :eek: Seems to be unfair trading in some manner but i'm sure there is someone out there who will argue they are completely entitled to do this?

peckerhead

Snake Pliskin, I thought you was dead..

@everyone : yep, they all do this, and yep, it's perfectly legal, I'm afraid. You always get a 'take-it-or-leave-it', 'are-you-quite-sure?' screen to read and check and say 'Yes, I've read the terms and conditions' screen before putting through the payment. Morally, it's wrong, but the law ain't nothin' to do with right or wrong - as 'Snake Pliskin' hisself should know...

The only way to get round this kind of sh1t is to price the return flights, then 2 x one-ways on the same dates, then clear your cookies and go for it again...

Ryanair and the likes can be great if you 'work the system', but they'll f*ck you if they can, every which way! :mad:

StickyMcGinty

i booked 6 flights to amsterdam and the tickets were goin up and up to 164 euro at one stage, and then i checked there last week and they were at €123! so i got em cheap. and now if i got back and check again their at their mad high price!

Snake Plisken

Hey Peckerhead, I was just laying low on Manhatten Island

So the way around this that you mentioned have you tried it? I've tried clearing my cookies/history etc on my home pc and I happened to have my work laptop at home as well and same problem so it seems to store your ip address on its servers for a period of time. Anyway someone in the media might take an interest, no point complaining to Aer Lingus not going to get any satisfaction from them. So I think go to the media and get them bad publicity!!!! No one messes with Snake

LostinBlanch

I wouldn't have thought of them recognising your ip address and upping the price. Sneaky bastards.

Have you tried using something like anonymizer.com to hide your ip address? I wonder if it would be worth it.

Wertz

..or you could just reboot your router or renew your dynamic IP addy (assuming your ISP uses one).
Oh and VinnyL; much cheaper to use EasyJet to schipol from Belfast Int...nearly half the aer lingus price on average once you book about 4-6 weeks ahead..easyjet are robbing c*nts too but once you play by their rules they're a good choice.

StickyMcGinty

thats the thing werz, i'm bringin campin gear so i need the extra aer lingus allowence, and i dont wanna be headin up north ye mad thing! we're lazy students dont ye know!

the_syco

Snake Plisken wrote:

Dont know if this is the right or wrong forum, but wanted to warn as many folks and make them aware of this fix.

Aye, it should go to Rip Off Ireland

(boards.ie/vbulletin > Hosted > Activism > Rip Off Ireland)

Wertz

VinnyL wrote:

thats the thing werz, i'm bringin campin gear so i need the extra aer lingus allowence, and i dont wanna be headin up north ye mad thing! we're lazy students dont ye know!

Off to dance valley are we? Yeah easyjet suck for luggage charges, but it's pretty startight forward to get to belfast int these days...plenty of bus and train services. I hate dublin airport with a passion.

RainyDay

Snake Plisken wrote:

aerlingus.com seems to recognise your ip address and if your in the middle of booking and you go back in it recognises your ip address and increases the cost of the flights. And before you ask there where plenty of free seats on the flight!

This is rubbish. This is not a rip-off. They are entitled to change their pricing any time they like. If you don't like the price, don't buy the ticket. Pricing systems depend on supply & demand. Prices will changing depending on the 10 other people, or 100 other people who are booking the same flights at the same time. The world doesn't revolve around you.

Ronan|Raven

VinnyL wrote:

i booked 6 flights to amsterdam and the tickets were goin up and up to 164 euro at one stage, and then i checked there last week and they were at €123! so i got em cheap. and now if i got back and check again their at their mad high price!

VinnyL I had the excact same issue when booking flights to amsterdam for 4 of us a few weeks ago.

Hobbes

When you place a booking for a flight the ticket system temp holds those seats for a certain time (think its 24 hours). So if you go back within that time and try to order the seats again for the same time/date they will go up in price because the last time you checked seats have been removed.

That is partly it, commission and whatnot also effects price. For example years ago for work I had to book through American Express. I would check on the net and find a flight for say $200, I'd ring AE and they would charge $600 for the exact same flight. When I tell them I found one for $200, they would magically find one for $180.

savemejebus

RainyDay wrote:

This is rubbish. This is not a rip-off. They are entitled to change their pricing any time they like. If you don't like the price, don't buy the ticket. Pricing systems depend on supply & demand. Prices will changing depending on the 10 other people, or 100 other people who are booking the same flights at the same time. The world doesn't revolve around you.

I think you're missing the point, the complaint is about aer lingus upping the price, not because of supply and demand, but because they want you to think that the seats you were looking at are gone and that if you don't book the higher price tickets you won't get on the flight at all.

Snake Plisken

Correct Savemejebus, Aer Lingus know that you are looking for particular flight and will up the price if you don't book straight away, sometimes you have to check with Friends and family to see if the dates you want to travel suit them and if you have to start again more then likely the price will rise. I read somewhere recently that Amazon do something similar in that if you add an item to your wish list, after a few days it will go up in price.
I just wanted to warn people so that they avoid being ripped off like I was

Snake

RainyDay

I'm not missing the point at all. Your conclusion that the change in price is due to IP address checking has no basis. You assume that all other things are equal on both occasions that you check the prices - but there may well have been huge differences in supply & demand. There may have been bookings or cancellations in between times that affected the price offered to you. There is no rip-off here.

RicardoSmith

Personally I think its a bit underhand myself. I noticed the same issue booking RyanAir flights last week. In the end I got them for 0.99 and 12.99 to E.Midlands. Which was decent. But had to go for the really early flights and shuffle my days about, which, meant taking a (flexi) day off work to get them.

The best way yo get these flights is to decide when and where you want to got, work out the most unsocialble times you can travel and see whats the best deal you get the first time you hit the site. Once you try the same times, days a few times the price goes up. Once you see a good deal you need to have the cop on to grab it. Same with holidays.

galwaydude

aer lingus are terrible at that, i remember when i booked tickets for me and my gf to boston in jan, 4 months in advance.I was shafted 300 euro as the same tickets were way less a week later.

StickyMcGinty

Wertz wrote:

Off to dance valley are we? Yeah easyjet suck for luggage charges, but it's pretty startight forward to get to belfast int these days...plenty of bus and train services. I hate dublin airport with a passion.

i certainly am..... and what a whopper weekend its gonna be!!

just hope aer lingus dont act the bollóx with the camping gear!

Ronan|Raven

I had a large ruscksack, with sleeping mat strapped to the bottom (odd sized) and a tent and they let it on no hassle.

secret_squirrel

Snake Plisken wrote:

Correct Savemejebus, Aer Lingus know that you are looking for particular flight and will up the price if you don't book straight away

Complete and utter crap - this doesnt happen. They dont take a note of your ip in order to rip you off. Talk about paranoia.

What happened was your were quoted the last cheap fare on the flight, and whilst you dithered and píssed about someone quicker got it.

And for the poster who saw the fare cheaper a week later - it happens get over it. Either there was a new sale or they dropped the fares coz they werent selling the seats. It happens every week in most forms of retail. Get used to it.

Any afaik the last time I heard you do have to book travel today over the phone. Or at least travel within x hours of departure where x is probably around 8 hours or so.

A Dub in Glasgo

I have booked hundreds of flights with Aer Lingus and Ryanair over the last 15 years and I have never had this happen to me. What am I doing wrong?

Irishstabber

secret_squirrel wrote:

Any afaik the last time I heard you do have to book travel today over the phone. Or at least travel within x hours of departure where x is probably around 8 hours or so.

You do.. I think its on the site actually.

parsi

We went to Paris with Aer Lingus during the last mid-term break mainly because the wife was surfing their site a few weeks previously and snapped up a dirt-cheap fare for the 5 of us. For divilment I sued to check the site and after we booked it started to rise and ended up around 4 times what we had paid - the latest fare was a bit more like what you would expect for the mid-term.

Normally though if you want it cheap you have to go during working time and thats just simple supply-and-demand - most people want to travel at weekends !

Bluehair

secret_squirrel wrote:

What happened was your were quoted the last cheap fare on the flight, and whilst you dithered and píssed about someone quicker got it.

Quite an entertaining thread But yea this is exactly what happened. There are so many people checking prices at any one time that prices can and do fluctuate as cookies hold cheaper seats for a few minutes while someone is checking prices.

There's no rip-off and no conspiracy :rolleyes: , just plain old supply and demand. Lesson: if you see what you want at the price you want don't hesitate!

galwaydude

secret_squirrel

And for the poster who saw the fare cheaper a week later - it happens get over it. Either there was a new sale or they dropped the fares coz they werent selling the seats. It happens every week in most forms of retail. Get used to it.

i am over it,i was just stating the only time i had an issue with the site so RELAX mate, we are all here to tell our experiences not to get bashed by an aer lingus employee or whoever you are.

oneweb

I wouldn't believe this except for the fact that I came across it myself. I thought it was just a bug.
Re-starting a new internet and browsing session reverted the price to the cheaper one.

Snake Plisken

Secret Nutjob its not crap, maybe your working for the airlines , Lots of people have posted similar experiences not only with Aer Lingus buy Ryan Air etc, when I tried to book my October flights, dates were low season flight during a week and the chances of 10 or 20 people booking for that date on that flight would be quite low, yet the prices started to increase upwards, after the first session timed out!

Snake
P.S. Take a chill pill your to stress out

secret_squirrel

oneweb wrote:

I wouldn't believe this except for the fact that I came across it myself. I thought it was just a bug.
Re-starting a new internet and browsing session reverted the price to the cheaper one.

Co-incidence - what actually happened was someone either cancelled or a seat that was being held (but not quite booked yet) was released.

Snake Plisken wrote:

when I tried to book my October flights, dates were low season flight during a week and the chances of 10 or 20 people booking

It doesnt need 10-20 people it only takes you booking the last cheap seat. Believe me what you are saying doesnt happen. The only possible similar situation is when your server side session is still holding the last cheap seat after it expires client side.

Snake Plisken wrote:

its not crap

Im sorry it is. As much as you dont want to believe it my explanations make more sense than your conspiracy theories.

str8_away

Read an article few month ago while I was in London.

They have a very complex system to calculate the price for tickets.
In general they would keep 10% of tickets for last minutes booking for people who would pay anything to get on that flight.
Also they would over book themselves assuming that some people would change their plan and cancel the ticket or did turn up before the flight time.

It was suggested in the article that if you are planning to book 4 tickets you should check the price for just one seat as they might have 3 seats left on cheap faire then you could get 3 seats on cheaper faire and only have pay one seat on higher faire.

Also the price would be cheaper to book way advance, given it is not at high season, then it would raise but about a month before flight date the price would drop again to boost the sale on the remaining seats.

The article did not mention anything about IP tracking. But I have experienced the price raise after session timeout phenomenon. The price did not raise after the first session timeout but the second time, it was late and I keep making typing mistake. After that I decide to take a break and book the ticket next morning. And guess what the price falls back down. SO I would assume once you start to input your payment detail the system think that the ticket is sold and the system would reset itself in the early hours in the morning.

WUSBDesign

Ah! So, the answer to the apparent price hike, in the situations everyone is seeing, is NOT to contend with oneself....... :-)

secret_squirrel

str8_away wrote:

Read an article few month ago while I was in London.
....snip...................

Pretty much spot on.

Few minor points -

Its more complex than your explanation for a major full service airline (like BA or Virgin say) they include factors such as how well the flight sold last year, events at the destination, how well its sells if its a tuesday, if its summer etc. Its majorly complicated.

Overbooking again depends on the above and also on how much it costs to offload the passenger onto another flight or put them up in a hotel, and also how many people dont show up for a flight. (industry average about 10%). This is happening less and less though as people are getting better at turning up!

Advance booking will nearly always be cheaper on Ryan Air (barring the odd sale) since they use a much simpler model on which the price rises as the number of days before departure decline.

sleur

guys, yield control!

Raiser

BingoBongo wrote:

Although I sympathise with your problem, it was your decision to book the flights and you had the option to pull out at any time. On both occasions you had got prices that were favourable but you let the session expire and thus lost the cheap flights.

RainyDay wrote:

This is rubbish. This is not a rip-off. They are entitled to change their pricing any time they like. If you don't like the price, don't buy the ticket. Pricing systems depend on supply & demand. Prices will changing depending on the 10 other people, or 100 other people who are booking the same flights at the same time. The world doesn't revolve around you.

Sorry you two, not me personally - but lots of people would be inclined to say that ye are fupping idiots.....

Next time you go to buy a pint of milk and the shopkeeper charges you €5 cause they can see your baby wretched and crying in your arms you'll realise that sly, underhand, opportunistic exploitation is wrong and that honest business/and trading is a desirable thing.

twatz

RainyDay

Raiser wrote:

Sorry you two, not me personally - but lots of people would be inclined to say that ye are fupping idiots.....

Next time you go to buy a pint of milk and the shopkeeper charges you €5 cause they can see your baby wretched and crying in your arms you'll realise that sly, underhand, opportunistic exploitation is wrong and that honest business/and trading is a desirable thing.

twatz

You're missing the fupping point. If the shopkeeper tries to screw you over, you walk away - you probably don't go back to that shop. If Aer Lingus tries to screw you over, you are quite entitled to walk away and not go back. If they screw over most of their customers, most of their customers will walk way.

But there is nothing in this story that shows there is exploitation - the blinkered view of several posters seems to assume that the world revolves around them, and only their personal actions could be the cause of the price changes. Open your/their eyes and see the big picture ......

secret_squirrel

RainyDay wrote:

If they screw over most of their customers, most of their customers will walk way.

Hmm that theory doesnt seem to have hurt ryan air much.

parsi

secret_squirrel wrote:

Hmm that theory doesnt seem to have hurt ryan air much.

Ah yes.. but Ryan still tend to have cheaper prices !

Raiser

Not so sure what ya mean rainy day...There seems to be more grocery shops to choose from than Airlines in this country.

- If you picked up a tin of beans in your local Sp@r shop and the owner swapped the price tag for one 100% more expensive - while you wern't looking - just cause he now knew you were interested in it and wanted to screw you...... Is that not being a sh1t and exploiting your customer?

I know you can go elsewhere - that doesn't mean that these people cease to be dishonest, opportunistic sh1ts....

We've seen developments in consumer history from the advent of mass production to the birth of the electronics industry- this seems to be a step in the wrong direction - abusing e-retailing through deviousness and basically being w@nkers - O'L3ary has always wanted to screw people over, we knew about their staff, now he's got no respect for his consumers either.

No respect.

RainyDay

Adjusting your pricing to maxiimise your revenue is not dishonest - it's business. Any business that doesn't adjust their prices to maximise their income without damaging their relationship with their customers to the extent that it impacts their future business is crazy.

BigEejit

RainyDay wrote:

Any business that doesn't adjust their prices to maximise their income without damaging their relationship with their customers to the extent that it impacts their future business is crazy.

I'm a bit dizzy after reading that

Raiser

RainyDay wrote:

Adjusting your pricing to maxiimise your revenue is not dishonest - it's business. Any business that doesn't adjust their prices to maximise their income without damaging their relationship with their customers to the extent that it impacts their future business is crazy.

Any business that increases their prices by a few 100% if you show some interest while hoping you don't notice is screwing people - in a cheap and mouldy way - they're no better than knackers robbing people on the streets.

If its perfectly good business/commercial practice why don't they spell it out clearly during the transaction?

Dear customer, we note that you have queried the availability of a seat on flight XYZ,
we conclude that since you are now querying this seat again we can hold you over a
barrel and probe you anally. We have just increased our original price by 100%. Please
click next to enter your credit-card information


Someone else take a turn, I reckon Rainy must be winding me up.

secret_squirrel

Raiser wrote:

Someone else take a turn, I reckon Rainy must be winding me up.

Actually if you had actually bothered to read all the posts in this thread you would have seen myself and several other saying that the situation you are describing doesnt happen (bold for the hard of reading).

None of the Airlines (to the best of my knowledge) diliberately raise their prices after you make an equiry. I suggest you read my previous posts that describe a situation that can happen that might resemble that situation.

What does happen is that just like any other business they raise or lower their prices in response to supply and demand. At most this happens overnight - usually a lot less often.
They dont alter their prices in response to a individual users enquiry.

sorry for all the bold...but sheesh!

Tony

Raiser wrote:

Dear customer, we note that you have queried the availability of a seat on flight XYZ,
we conclude that since you are now querying this seat again we can hold you over a
barrel and probe you anally. We have just increased our original price by 100%. Please
click next to enter your credit-card information

Thats hilarious, thanks for a great laugh

Alun

I've just booked a return flight for two adults on flybe.com. €144 for the flights plus a whopping €112 charges (which weren't broken down for me, so I guess I just have to trust them). If that wasn't bad enough they charged me €2.50 per flight segment, per person (!!!!!) for using a credit card to book online! Now, I can just about cope with having a cc charge, but per person, per flight when it just comes down to one cc transaction? Now that's a rip off.

Automan

Alun wrote:

I've just booked a return flight for two adults on flybe.com. €144 for the flights plus a whopping €112 charges (which weren't broken down for me, so I guess I just have to trust them). If that wasn't bad enough they charged me €2.50 per flight segment, per person (!!!!!) for using a credit card to book online! Now, I can just about cope with having a cc charge, but per person, per flight when it just comes down to one cc transaction? Now that's a rip off.

Ryanair also do this but I think there cc charges are 5 euros per person.

RainyDay

Raiser wrote:

Any business that increases their prices by a few 100% if you show some interest while hoping you don't notice is screwing people - in a cheap and mouldy way - they're no better than knackers robbing people on the streets.

If its perfectly good business/commercial practice why don't they spell it out clearly during the transaction?

Dear customer, we note that you have queried the availability of a seat on flight XYZ,
we conclude that since you are now querying this seat again we can hold you over a
barrel and probe you anally. We have just increased our original price by 100%. Please
click next to enter your credit-card information


Someone else take a turn, I reckon Rainy must be winding me up.

Try reading it again - particularly this bit;

without damaging their relationship with their customers to the extent that it impacts their future business

Has the penny dropped yet?

But Squirrel is right - this just doesn't happen. The airlines aren't going to base their pricing policy around an approach that can be easily avoided by clearing cookings & redialling to get a new IP address.

Snake Plisken

Well guys, i'm glad this thread has created quite the debate, all I wanted to do is warn people to watch out when they are booking on line with Aer Fungus, that it times out pretty quickly and if you let it happen once or twice you will find your flights have gone up in price, if you believe it or not and we have a lot of people on here who have been caught out, just make sure you know your dates and you won't run into this issue.

Snake