£39 return flights to Europe - Good Deal?

mrsvanderkamp_2

I apologise if this had already been posted but I've not spotted it.

Today's Groupon deal is a £39 return flight to a number of European cities and beach destinations. The voucher is valid for a year. When you come to book you have to pay any appropriate taxes on top. The supplier of the flights is airfasttickets.co.uk

Personally, I've never heard of them so have no idea if this likely to be a good deal, bearing in mind added charges such as baggage and tax, etc. Has anyone used them before who can comment on their charges for these "extras". Ibiza is included in the list and currently flights even with budget airlines are pretty expensive, so I am tempted.

s.morris

I looked at this too, and just felt that it was too good to be true! I was very tempted, as we have been looking for flight to Tenerife, and they are generally quite expensive.

I'm afraid that if I buy these, we won't be able to get the flights we want on the dates we want, and with children in secondary school, we have to be quite fussy with dates.

I'd be interested to learn if anyone has booked with them - would love to actually get these flights!

mrsvanderkamp_2

In order to try and gauge charges for bags etc, I thought I'd try and book some flights to Ibiza for 6 weeks' time and the search engine told me there were no avialble flights! On the basis that the deal says that the flights are with "major airlines" and not with budget ones, I cannot beleive that there are no flights out there within a one week window in six weeks' time. I don't think this bodes well for when trying to book flights with these vouchers unless you are flexible within the 1 year window for which the vouchers are valid! On that basis... I'm out!

(Although they have sold 2,500 of them so far so clearly others are more confident!)

robpw2

does it include taxes etc ?

mrsvanderkamp_2

No, see the OP. Partly why I'm not sure this is such a good deal.

vicxta

mrsvanderkamp wrote: »

No, see the OP. Partly why I'm not sure this is such a good deal.

I think it depends on when and where you want to travel.

If you can get a ticket in season for somewhere thats generally expensive, flights to alicante always are, it cud be good. But if your adding £20 for taxes and £30 for baggage its not very cheap when you can return flights to Madrid and certain Italy airports for under £20 if you are flexible with your flights.

Buntix

£20 for taxes could be a bit optimistic, I used their front page search to test prices for a return to Venice next month:

Outbound Flights (London, United Kingdom - Venice, Italy / 01 September, 2011) & Return Flights (Venice, Italy - London, United Kingdom / 07 September, 2011) - 1 Passenger

The cheapest result was:

Adult (7.00 base fare + 132.00 airport taxes): 139.00 GBP
Ticket price for all passengers including taxes: 139.00 GBP
Service Fee: 8.83 GBP

Presumably as they have £7 as the base fare normally, then you would actually be paying £32 more if you used the Groupon voucher, a total of £186.83

With bargains like that, who needs full price...

Unless there's something in the terms somewhere stating (with contractual obligation) what the range of tax + service fees are going to be, then I wouldn't want to trust it.

albo2002

I thought the taxes were set by the government and were dependent on how far you travel and what class you're going on?

For me, I'm thinking of going to Lisbon in September.

The Groupon deal should be £39 plus £48 in taxes - £87.

Easyjet is £75.

However, the flight times offered via groupon are better than Easyjet, so do I risk them still being available after this goes live on Friday?

At the moment, as the previous poster has said, some of the flights are cheaper than £39, so maybe cut out groupon altogether.

albo2002

Just went through it again and the flights that are free seem to get cancelled because of 'invalid groupon voucher'. However, I still cant find a flight that is more than £39 excluding the taxes!

Strangely, my flight to Lisbon was £76 for taxes. So that's £39 groupon plus £76 = £115.. £40 more expensive than Easyjet.

I've emailed airfasttickets.co.uk to ask what the taxes are and why they seem to be much higher than the HMRC rate.

succuba5

I'm also interested in this but had never heard if them before so a little worried. My friends and I are trying to organise a long weekend away somewhereand I thought this could be a good option to keep costs down but don't want it to all go t*ts up!

antenna

This is very similar to the hoover flights fiasco,but with this one you actually HAVE to take your hoover with you..............This so called "offer" is a con,scam,fiddle,you will get a flight of sorts but you will pay extortionate taxes.......avoid at all costs.