Prices changed on First Choice website

WishI'dReadSooner

As someone who in the past has used First Choice rather a lot for flights & belongs to a forum whose members also use First Choice regularly - they are pretty notorious for using cookies that need to be cleared to give you the best price.

Not saying that cookies are the reason for the leap as they also have a VERY fluid pricing system.
As an example we booked flights to Turkey for a very good price of about £110 each (after clearing cookies which put price up to £140). Immediately after we booked the same flight was showing at minimum of £240 no matter if cookies were cleared or not. Prices tend to go up £20 or so on average if cookies aren't cleared BUT can be much more!

If you want to keep checking the prices - try using Firefox & get it to remove all cookies automatically on closing - when I remember to check this way it seems much easier than using IE & removing IE cookies.

Also A TIP - check each time how many seats are left (try putting 9 people in for flights on First Choice). If there aren't many seats left you'll get a feel for optimum time - I think it was when 4-5 seats are left that you get best price. Sometimes 2-3 weeks ahead, sometimes it's best last minute.

I'm not sure about whether you clicking on a particular time/place makes price go up but just in case i was sneaky PMSL & looked at same flights week before more often. That way you got a feel for price etc. so if you saw a good price on the one you want GRABBIT.

Yes, sometimes just minutes can make a massive difference & if you click on seats left you'll see the massive rise was due to seats being sold if there are few seats left.

Hope the above makes sense.

shudd1967

I use First Choice and Eclipse nearly all the time and I am very careful about clearing cookies.

One tip is if you see a really good price go through the quote stage and print it off.

Twice now I have used these print offs to go into a First Choice branch and got them to price match when the price has gone up on the computer.

Sam_Bee

budgetflyer wrote: »

All this cookie clearing is a bit of an urban myth IMO .
Prices change based on demand and availability.. I dont believe they can alter the price on an individual basis. In fact it is more likely to lose a sale than gain one if that was the case.

It's a complete urban myth. Clear your cookies if it makes you feel any better, but as someone who used to price up packages for holidays, I can categorically guarantee this does not happen. On some systems if you check availability, then the flights can be held off for you for 10-15 minutes (so you can enter all your details etc) in which case if someone else then tries to purchase the same holiday, they might have a higher fare.

Changes in prices are almost always down to the flight element (I said almost always please note!) but there are 60 odd million people in this country, most taking holidays, and most investigating prices when they should be working! It's all down to to fluid pricing, and typically, it's first come first served.

But clear your cookies if it makes you feel better, at the very worst, your computer should run faster

Incapuppy

Thank you very much to all who took the trouble to explain this situation further.

I think I shall use a combination of the advice given and see what happens.

I'll report back in the future and let you know if my new dastardly website surveillance methods yield a good result ;0)

Thanks again, much appreciated x

rlc22

I'm sure that if any of the bods at FC are reading this then they will be having a laugh at the "clearing cookies" theory.

There is NO WAY that this happens. Aside from anything else, they'd be tying themselves in knots about what price they'd offered who, never mind what Nicky Clarke would have to say when someone went to Watchdog!

As many people use the internet at both home and work (generally separate machines and therefore separate cookies), how on earth would the website know what price to serve up? Oh that's right, they'd know from the retina scanning equipment that they've put in the site :rolleyes:

But everyone loves conspiracy theories...

jackieblack

rlc22 wrote: »

Aside from anything else, they'd be tying themselves in knots about what price they'd offered who, never mind what Nicky Clarke would have to say when someone went to Watchdog!

Isn't Nicky Clarke a hairdresser? What's he got to do with Watchdog?

rlc22

jackieblack wrote: »

Isn't Nicky Clarke a hairdresser? What's he got to do with Watchdog?

Lol! I obviously meant Nicky Campbell!!

I'd just had my haircut, so maybe it was something subliminal!

jackieblack

rlc22 wrote: »

Lol! I obviously meant Nicky Campbell!!

I'd just had my haircut, so maybe it was something subliminal!

LOL - oh dear, a 'senior' moment! I know the feeling! LOL