Price of flight gone up within 5 minutes of trying to book online

~Loz~

I am trying to book a flight online with Ryanair, i entered all my details but missed out a number on my card, it declined my card, when i filled in the details again i noticed the price has gone up £20!!!!

Has this happened to anyone else, have i tried to book at a time when they change prices or is something else going on, to be honest i am fuming!!!! :eek:

dzug1

They change prices when a certain number of the seats on the plane have been sold - it's automatic

What's likely is that the last seat at the old price was sold to someone else while you were correcting your mistake.

~Loz~

Thanks for the reply.

Will the price keep going up?

M4RKM

if someone else books a seat, and they sell out of that fare price.. yes..

blindman

~Loz~ wrote: »

Thanks for the reply.

Will the price keep going up?

There is another sinister reason why the price went up.:eek:

Some intelligent software will track that you've searched for that flight.

When you look again within a short period of time it will up the price as it "assumes" you are ready and want to buy.

How to beat\test this?

Clear "cookies" set by Ryan Air
Use another computer (different IP address)
Wait until tomorrow and try again.

It happened to me with BMI a while back-scary!

~Loz~

blindman wrote: »

There is another sinister reason why the price went up.:eek:

Some intelligent software will track that you've searched for that flight.

When you look again within a short period of time it will up the price as it "assumes" you are ready and want to buy.

How to beat\test this?

Clear "cookies" set by Ryan Air
Use another computer (different IP address)
Wait until tomorrow and try again.

It happened to me with BMI a while back-scary!

You could be onto something there!

I have been in and out of the site for the last hour (mad i know, but i need to book) and the price has continually changed with a difference of £20 each time except this last time it was £30 dearer!!

Where do i view my cookies so i only delete the ryanair ones?
Thanks for the help.

* Also why won't it take my solo card when it has that option on the page?

jonathon

to view cookies on xp, right click internet explorer, click properties, browsing history, click settings, then view files.but its quicker just to delate browsing history

kingston_toon

I don't believe in the whole "airlines increase the price if you keep checking the fare" theory. I do this with Ryanair all the time... checking the same fare day after day, or hour after hour, waiting for it to go on promo. If a fare is around £30 or more plus tax, then it probably won't go down. But a £0.99 or £2.99 or £14.99 plus tax fare always stays the same, even if I check 10 times in a day. Then, usually, eventually it goes on promo at £5 inc tax, and that's when to book.

Of course that applies to the likes of Hahn, Bergamo and Torp, but probably not Tenerife, Malaga and Malta!

blindman

kingston_toon wrote: »

I don't believe in the whole "airlines increase the price if you keep checking the fare" theory.

Here's my "evidence":

I’m sure all airlines computers do this but was shocked at the price variations, plus the ‘sneaky’ way this was done.

I know that the budget airlines increase fares if you book as a group of say three or more at one go rather than booking each fare individually. But the increase is usually in the £5.00-£10.00 range.

Whilst looking to book a return fare (MAN-BGI) I accessed the flybmi.com web site several times over a three hour period on my work PC :rolleyes: to try to put together a trip.

Initially the cheapest fare I found was £538.00 and I went all the way to the payment page before I was interrupted so I closed the browser and did not purchase.

Later I did the same booking but due to my optimistic nature of trying to get a cheaper fare and juggling dates etc I repeated the process about three times in one sitting. Still undecided (doh!) I closed the browser.

Finally I decided to book and again went to the web-site. Imagine my surprise when the cheapest price for the same flight\dates etc was now £578.00

This put a dent in my budget calculations (I know it’s only £40.00 MSE won't let me do it though! ) so I decided not to book yet (!) and closed the browser.

Later I thought I may as well swallow the extra cost (due to my earlier indecisiveness) and book.
Imagine my amazement when I found the price was now £618.00!

This huge hike in price over a few hours got me thinking that it wasn’t due to passenger load increases but some software code was seeing that I had been looking at the same fare for a while.

I did not clear my cookies ,but accessed the web-site through another PC at work. The result was the same high price of £618.00. However due to using translation IP addressing at work I guessed that this different PC would still be showing up at Flybmi.com as the same IP address.

I live close to work so minutes after this last price check on my work PC of £618.00 I left for home.
At home I logged onto the flybmi.com web-site about 15 minutes after my last attempt at work.
Guess what, the price was now £538.00

I booked this (finally!) and then went to work.
So at work again, about 15 minutes after my successful booking I checked the price again.
Yes, you guessed, it was £618.00 :eek:


The next day I checked the price from work and it was down to £538.00

So the moral of the story is, don’t be indecisive or if you are then don’t believe the price hikes.


Addendum
I realised the same had happened a month earlier when I was booking a LHR-TLV flight.
On that occasion I dithered only two-three times (Must be more decisive-I thnk ) and the price went up by £50. On that occasion I bought the ticket....

Nordictat2

kingston_toon wrote: »

I don't believe in the whole "airlines increase the price if you keep checking the fare" theory.

I do and I'm sure there are quite a few people who also believe in it. Just as we have our money saving tricks..THEY have their earning extra money tricks but as Blindman has explained there is a way around it :T Until they think up of another tax or fee to add on..that is :rolleyes:

Moonchild

kingston_toon wrote: »

I don't believe in the whole "airlines increase the price if you keep checking the fare" theory.

They don't, 100% categorically don't, but there is no harm in a good MSE conspiracy theory :cool:

One thing to bare in mind is that for many airline booking systems when you check a price on a specific flight it removes the seats from general inventory for a period of time (often around 10-15 minutes) to allow you to complete the transaction. That in effect removes those seats from general sale. It also removes them from sale should you look at other flights, and then come back to try and book these ones. If you did it multiple times, multiple seats would be removed from sale, and inevitably the price would show as rising as there are obviously limited seats at each fare stage.

However, after 15 odd minutes these seats will have been released back into the system, and allow you to book at the original price. If however, you've got exasperated in that period of time, and checked the seats 15 times on 13 different computers, then you are probably best walking away for half an hour

It doesn't make any difference whether you believe me or not, irrespective of your experiences or not, but it does not happen! It may 'appear' to happen quite a lot, but remember that as little as 8 seats may be released at an airlines lowest fare. If you are booking 2 people, that's 25% of the available seats at that price. So if you grab those seats, there's a less than 1 in 8 (?statisticions can help me out here!?) chance that are removing the last cheapest seats, so yes, when you go back to them, the price will be higher.