Heres something ya didn't know about Airline websites....

Linoge

Was booking flights on www.tarom.ro from Bucharest to Iasi. After I looked at it a few times , the price went up, then looked at it later and it went up again! Was talking to a guy in work and he said the same thing always happens, thats why you should book earlier.

I had a think...
I tried another computer and low and behold the price was back to the same it was a few days ago! Strange....

I checked it on a few different computers in work, the same thing happened. After a few views the price went up. Them bastards (and I'm sure Ryanair too) are using cookies to register your interest, then hiking up the price.

I'm shocked and/or appalled.......

zoro

holy moly .... that's just not right

and it's GOT to be illegal

secret_squirrel

That is complete and utter crap - and has already been discussed on this thread here

Please read the whole thread - except the Aircraft related rambling at the end!

calis

ur such a drama queen zoro :eek:

grimloch

What a bunch of pr!cks. And I thought I was going mad.

Sparky

seen it last night in the bargain alerts thread

djmarkus

Well they can be doing this 1 of 2 ways, they could be monitoring your IP address, or they could be keeping a cookie on ur computer logging the amount of time u visited

secret_squirrel

Oh ffs. Let me say this again.

IT
DOES
NOT
HAPPEN
ON
ANY
MAJOR
AIRLINES
WEBSITE.

Now try to read the other thread before putting a mindless comment.

Let me recap for the lazy.
When you make a seat request those seats are temporarily held for you, these seats come from a limited pool. Maybe as few as 1 or 2 depending on how busy the flight is.
So you make your enquire and take them out of the pool. Then you mess around and the session expires. Meanwhile serverside your seats are still held.
You then start another session picking from the smaller remaining pool of seats. Do this enough times and all the cheap seats are held by expired sessions. Then you get quoted the price of the next cheapest seats. etc etc.

Leave it long enough and the seats will be released serverside, however on a busy site that gets several bookings a second, someone else can easily snap up those seats - leaving you with the impression that you have been swindled.

Real

secret_squirrel wrote:

Oh ffs. Let me say this again.

IT
DOES
NOT
HAPPEN
ON
ANY
MAJOR
AIRLINES
WEBSITE.

Now try to read the other thread before putting a mindless comment.

Let me recap for the lazy.
When you make a seat request those seats are temporarily held for you, these seats come from a limited pool. Maybe as few as 1 or 2 depending on how busy the flight is.
So you make your enquire and take them out of the pool. Then you mess around and the session expires. Meanwhile serverside your seats are still held.
You then start another session picking from the smaller remaining pool of seats. Do this enough times and all the cheap seats are held by expired sessions. Then you get quoted the price of the next cheapest seats. etc etc.

Leave it long enough and the seats will be released serverside, however on a busy site that gets several bookings a second, someone else can easily snap up those seats - leaving you with the impression that you have been swindled.

But if that was the case then the flight could appear sold out if lots of people had enquired about the flight recently but none of them may have bought a seat.

It doesnt really make sence to have an empty flight appear sold out from the airlines point of view

Are you sure its not just remembering IP addresses or cookies?

Linoge

Real wrote:

But if that was the case then the flight could appear sold out if lots of people had enquired about the flight recently but none of them may have bought a seat.

It doesnt really make sence to have an empty flight appear sold out from the airlines point of view

Exactly

secret_squirrel wrote:

You then start another session picking from the smaller remaining pool of seats. Do this enough times and all the cheap seats are held by expired sessions. Then you get quoted the price of the next cheapest seats. etc etc.

Leave it long enough and the seats will be released serverside, however on a busy site that gets several bookings a second, someone else can easily snap up those seats - leaving you with the impression that you have been swindled.

So tell me, if you just exit for one second and return, the prices are gone up, but if you stay on the quote screen then immedietly go to another computer and check the same flights the prices can go back to the original quote?
That is what happened me.

How should I put it.....
THEY
DO
NOT
DO
THIS
JUST
TO
HOLD
SEATS

Anyway, why would they hold seats at the quote screen? Surely it would be a better system to hold them when the seats have actually been bought?

K!LL!@N

I'm pretty sure a lot of sites tell you that you have 10-15 minutes to book the flight you've requested.
During this time the seat is being held for you and isn't available to anyone else.
If you don't continue the booking the seat is still held for that time period.
After the holding period the seat is released again.

I noticed it before when i was trying to book a flight and i'd stopped the booking and tried to get it again but it appeared to be gone.
I waited 10 minutes and it was back.

Killian

WizZard

It's partly a programming issue. How would you feel if you spent 5 mins talking about whether or not to book a flight with your other half, then when you went to book properly/pay the flight was full?
The seats have to be held at some stage and the fairest, from a users perspective, is to hold them when you enquire about them.