I got all excited!

I have now seen this banner on several cheap flight websites and so I tried to get the price on offer.

My first port of call was to click the link and see if I could book online.  The first thing I notice is a few discrepancies in the booking procedure. Is it poor programming? Is it poor scheduling? I don’t know.  I clicked the link whilst getting excited at the chance to fly at discount prices into Ercan from the UK. Firstly I tried to book for the New Year, Dec/Jan 2009-2010. The message came back, “sorry first available flight April 2010.” OK I thought, try the summer then, any time  between July-October. The dates and flight details come up (let’s not quibble that the advertised price doesn’t get met) and I try to book only to get the message that the maximum stay is 21 days for “Pegasus” flights. Eh? What’s going on? Pegasus with YK flight numbers, whatever next. The practice of advertising “deals” that no one can find should be banned. Even the airlines cannot book  you on a flight at the price advertised.

Try it! Phone CTA and say “I’d  like a 159 GBP return LGW-ECN please”.

The reply will be a predictable,

“when do you want to fly?”

“I want to fly when it costs 159 GBP.”

“Sorry we can’t do it like that.”

So where do I find the “Pric(z)e”? A bit like the lucky dip in the lottery. It’s not just CTA, it’s almost any airline or cheap fare operator.

How would a retailer fare if they offered a product, let’s say a TV, at 50 quid? Off you trot expecting to buy one at that price. Once you arrive at the shop, the salesman says

“Oh! That offer. Yes, well you must tell us what day you want your TV on”.

“How about now?”

“Er, I’ll check”

After a couple of minutes while said salesman slopes off for a fag, he returns with the sad news that,

“sorry, the TV costs 499 GBP today.”

“OK next Tuesday?” You enquire.

“Nope. No TVs on Tuesdays.”

“Wednesday?”

“Er…. No.”

Monty Python could use it,  but personally the dead parrot is dead welcome to the CTA special offer prices.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 17th, 2009 at 8:27 am and is filed under Transport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.