Yesterday was an experience in total frustration. See, my sister Audrey is getting married in exactly two months, making right now a fine time to make travel arrangements. First, I went to Southwest Airlines’ website because, lucky me, I have a frequent flier ticket that I’ve been saving for just this occasion. Fool that I am. Because as it turns out, unless you have TWO of those tickets, you can’t actually get on an airplane anywhere near the dates you want to travel. Or, you know, at an hour that’s not 5AM or 11PM with three connecting flights.
What a scam. Truly. I felt like a horrible trick had been played on me. We were really counting on having to purchase only one ticket for this trip. Alas. I shake my fist at the joke that is award tickets.
So, on the advice of a coworker, I introduced myself to Bing.com. And looky there! I found two round-trip, direct flights to Salt Lake City for about $500. Five hundred dollars is still a chunk o’ change, but with some budget re-adjusting we could do that. Hot dog! I messaged the Dork Lord to confirm the times and sat back feeling rather pleased. But in the time it took him to get back to me (an hour? Less?) the price of the cheapest flights had soard to an unconscionable $900, for the both of us. In what world does that make any sort of sense? Yes, the seat that you wanted to sit in for $250? Well, tick-tock, we decided it’s now worth $450. BECAUSE WE CAN.
I didn’t cry, but I wanted to. You know how life is not fair sometimes? Yeah, not cool. Really not cool.
With a little research, I’ve learned that the cheap fares are released at 12:01AM Wednesdays, after a couple days of price warring by the airlines. Which, I suppose, explains why some of them were still around yesterday at 10AM, and then extinct before noon. So, guess who’s got two thumbs and will be staying up way past her bedtime next Tuesday night? This girl right here.
And if that fails? We will be taking extra time off work and driving to Utah. So what if the Dork Lord gets a little antsy in the car after four hours, never mind twenty four. It’ll be a test of our deep and abiding love. Ahem.
UPDATE: Oh, people. The trickery continues. So, I took the suggestion to clear out my cookies. After I did, I went back to Kayak.com and performed the same search and BAM! Two tickets for $500. Which I bought in the same breath.
UPDATE the DAMMIT Edition: Also, I am an idiot. I booked tickets for the wrong month, canceled them. Search BACK ON. I need a cocktail.
I like to fly. A lot. And I fly out of a not-so-large airport most of the time, so I use Kayak.com. It’s beautiful, because it searches all the other sites for you, so you don’t have to look at a million websites. Good luck on your search!
That’s strange–my mom uses Southwest rewards flights a lot and I don’t think she’s ever had a problem with them. Maybe if you tried talking to customer service?
Failing that, have you tried kayak.com? That’s my go-to for finding the cheapest airfares. Also, you can occasionally find better deals by doing your departing and returning flights separately (it usually means taking a different airline each way, which doesn’t always come up in the round trip searches). Another trick that sometimes works is clearing your internet cookies. I’ve read that some sites can track whether you’ve visited there already, and prices will go up for repeat visitors. Clearing your cache is supposed to help with that.
Good luck!
Biggest rip-off ever. I use airline miles for magazines only now, because I’m not sure they actually work for tickets unless you’re platinum plus. I have enough delta miles for a ticket supposedly, but I wasn’t able to travel with someone else without jacking up the price.
AAAAARRRRGH!!!!! I HATE flying! It’s like they go out of their way to make it a horrible, expensive, ridiculously uncomfortable experience.
I hope you can find a cheaper, comfy flight with a movie and some food.
I hear ya on this! Just last week we decided to book a quick vacation to Puerto Rico and I was buying vacation packages on the different sites – expedia, travelocity, orbitz, etc. I was SOOOOOO irritated when it took me TWO DAMN DAYS to find a good deal. I would find a certain hotel at a really nice price and then I would go back & wait for everyones confirmations that it was ok, and within an hour the prices would go up $200 or back down $200. It was different every time. So I finally found everything we wanted & clicked to book it all. We had our price, picked our hotel, our flight, our car…and right before I hit “confirm”, a pop-up on the next screen said that due to recent changes in airfare prices (between the few seconds it took me to click a button!) our price went up about $400 each. I, too, felt like crying. Now I have to break it to everyone that -unlike in Jan of 2008 when we flew down – this time we don’t get earbuds, food or drinks on the flight and we have to pay an enormously high rate for our BAGS! Uggghhhh it’s enough to make you want to drive everywhere. In fact, to avoid the hassle of flying, we drove 24 hrs to Florida for a week-long vacation in August & it was an awesome road trip.
I’ve used this website before and had good luck. Check it out and hopefully it saves you some headaches and an achy back from 24 hours in the car! Oh and your relationship!!
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wwww.tbbenson.rovia.com GOOD LUCK!
I like the Scrubs reference you tossed in there.
You’ve had good luck with your own travel website have ya, Brittany? How shady of you.
You said the Dork Lord gets ‘antsy’ not sure if that means car sick or restless (my sister gets car sick, I get restless but we’re both called antsy by the family). Either way, two suggestions: if he gets car sick, doesn’t Texas have amtrack trains? I know we don’t here in Northern Utah (not sure about Southern Utah) but maybe you could take the train as far as it will go, rent a car to drive the rest of the way? It’ll be a pain, but better then dealing with the results of car sickness (trust me). If he gets restless, the Big Three help: music, games and sightseeing. Here’s a link for road trip games:
http://www.edmunds.com/reviews/list/top10/121613/article.html
Whatever you do, hope you have a good trip.
Oh dear, well fingers crossed for you.
Also, you should watch Up in the Air. I can virtually guarantee you will laugh and/or cry at the main character: a man who flies around the country collecting frequent flyer miles and firing people.
How FRUSTRATING! I had a similar experience over the holidays. 2 weeks before xmas I finally found tickets at an affordable price. Have you tried sidestep.com?
Travel is frustrating at best and the air lines make it a less than fun filled adventure. You might look into train travel. My inlaws came from Ohio to Virginia for about the price of two plane tickets and no crazy body searches.
I despise the airline industry and their price scams. I have family in Duluth, Minnesota and to fly there once a year around the holidays usually costs my husband and I the equivalent of 3 paychecks. To fly to DULUTH in WINTER. I have priced tickets from Providence to Paris and they are usually cheaper. I think Christmastime in Paris will win out very soon.
Hi Friend-in-my-head,
This is the first time I’ve ever commented! Just wanted to chim in because I sympathize with the travel dramz. While I think of myself as a savvy traveler I just recently booked flights for the wrong week only to realize when they sent me a confirmation email about my upcoming trip…sooo at least you found out earlier.
Anyway, I’ve heard that flights are usually cheaper late on Saturday night as the companies clean out for the upcoming week. It’s worth a try, especially since it doesn’t require you staying up late on a school night.
Good luck good luck!
I know it is frustrating and it will all work out in the end…but I want to commend you for your amazing spirit and good humor through it all. Good luck.
Mark, your a tool. I have booked travel there and found it for a better deal than other places. Is that wrong of me to pass along to others? Plus if she books the flight I make no commission. No one EVER makes a commission on any flight. Sorry I was trying to be helpful. I guess that’s wrong. If it makes you feel better I can give her 10 other sites to book from that don’t have my name on them. I wasn’t trying to be shady otherwise I wouldn’t have put my own name on it. I would have used something else. That would have been shady.
Eh, I dunno, Brittany. I kind of agree with Mark that it’s just a little bit *strange* to promote your own travel site, but pretend like it’s NOT your site, and just some tool you just happened to have luck with. HOWEVER, I don’t think “shady” is the right word either, since, like you said, you’re not making any money off the deal.
But ultimately, I do not think name calling is the best way to arrive at an understanding.
Go to it or don’t go to it I don’t really care. All I thought I was doing was trying to help Heather find a cheaper flight. Sorry for trying to be helpful. Me promoting my own site would have looked more like this – HEY OVER HERE, HERE IS MY WEBSITE, PLEASE COME LOOK AT MY WEBSITE AND BOOK TRAVEL FROM MY WEBSITE, I MAKE TONS OF MONEY OF YOU LOOKING AT MY WEBSITE, PLEASE COME LOOK AT IT! But instead, I attached my name to it and said if you want, go ahead and look, if you don’t I don’t care either. I never once pretended it wasn’t my site.
I would recommend kayak too. I’ve found that it’s the best for domestic flights, and I like it’s filters, being able to narrow down my options to the most suitable arrival departure times is really great. The timing thing is totally true, I always book mid-week Wed-Thu and non peak hours either really late at night or random time in the middle of the day, not in the evening. But southwest/virgin doesn’t show up on kayak for some reason so I always double check their websites separately.
Fish – book tickets on Yapta.com (note: this is not my site. Hehe). If the price drops after you purchase it, they’ll refund the difference.