lumpyseat

I recently booked a round trip LHR-FCO through Google Flights, as the price was better than on Alitalia's site. Outbound was business class, and return was listed as "Economy" on Google Flights. My email confirmation also says I have "2 x 23kg" baggage on both legs. However the eticket receipts say "Baggage: Nil." This is the only indication that bags aren't included, and I didn't receive those until after purchase of course.

I'm in Italy, due to fly back to London tomorrow and lo and behold I'm actually on an Economy Light fare for the return leg. Just got off the phone with AZ and they confirmed I need to pay for my bags. They did ask me to forward my email confirmation so I guess they'll look into it.

Anyone run into this before? What can I do to avoid baggage fees?

Ditto

Google flights doesn't allow you to book flights directly, it sends you to other OTAs and/or the airline itself to book.

So it would help if you specify which website you actually booked for, and whether you have any screenshots showing the booking process? Or whether or not you can still look up the same flights and go through the same booking process for the same price?

Mwenenzi

Leave the bags in Italy?
You get what you pay for.
Just another example of problems booking flights with OTA. They are not really travel agents, but just software programmers. Quite sure some of the people on the end on the OTA's phones have never seen an aircraft close up or flown.

lumpyseat

Google Flights sends you to Alitalia to book. It's trivial to reproduce the behavior, you can search for a flight right now on Google, click through to Alitalia and see that it includes checked bags.

I don't routinely take screenshots when booking flights, do you? I do have the email confirmation as I wrote.

lumpyseat

I paid for a fare which included bags, according to the Alitalia site and email confirmation.

lumpyseat

http://imgur.com/a/ukXDv

Ditto

I don't, but I usually don't follow links from google flights, I instead start at the airline website
Also, you didn't specify who you booked with, it is easy for you to reproduce because you know all the details like dates & price which you have not provided us with.
How do you get Google Flights" to have one way in J and the return in Y?

This would make most people think you booked from an OTA rather than from AZ website itself, I would think it is suspicious if Google Flights sends you to AZ website and gives you a cheaper price than you would have gotten on AZ website itself...

lumpyseat

OTAs often deep link to fares that are cheaper than searching directly on the airline's website. I'm pleased that you can go through life confident in the knowledge that you'll never be taken in by this vicious business model.

Truth be told, Google isn't even an OTA. They make it clear that their results are just ads, either from the airlines themselves or 3rd parties. Any ideas on getting AZ to honor the fare they sold?

AlicorporateUK

Misleading to say the least, typical AZ's amateurish approach to anything IT-correlated these days, sadly (if I'll tell you that website and on-line services generally speaking were significantly better or at least fit for purpose back 15 years ago, you'll probably think I must have had a few Stellas at lunch time). And on that note: whilst I'm not entirely sure whether bringing that snap-shot with you at the airport is going to cut any ice with check-in staff, the always-present tiny fragment of hope could, however, play a better role than expected here given that check-in agents in Rome (main AZ hub) are normally more incline to customer service and goodwill compared to their counterparts in Italy (Milan anyone?) and other outstations (your chances would have been next-to-nil in London, for instance). Anyway, speak to them and say that you flew business on your way down and that, when purchasing the tickets, you were presented with that table confirming 2 bags both ways.

Let us know how you get on.

Fingers crossed for you ^

G

Ditto

OTAs can some time be cheaper than the airline website, yes, but then you book with the OTA, not with the airline.

Being sent from Google to an airline website, pointing to a fare that doesn't exist if you search it manually on the same airline website is suspicious to me, and I would double check every detail and take screenshots as well, and double check with the e-tickets I get later.

Given that economy class fares only comes with 1x23KG bag, and J comes with 2x32KG the 2x23KG would have been another red flag for me, not to mention all the "junk" for the conditions.

AZ IT is indeed amateur at best, and it seems as if google might be linking to "wrong" places which shows some glitches on the website, such as what you have discovered the hard way.

lumpyseat

Good news, AZ honored the fare and checked my bags for free. It did take a couple more calls but they reissued my ticket with bags included.

Chalk this one up to bad IT. Although I don't agree that it's the consumer's responsibility to double-check the validity of a fare which seems very reasonable, I'll be more careful with Google Flights in the future.