Online Travel Booking and Bidding Agencies - Is Farecompare.com useful at all?

Howdy! Newbie to the forum here... long time hunter of cheap airfares. I'll take years off my life sifting through countless webpages to find the best deals...

Stumbled across Farecompare a while back and have been trying to find a good fare from PIT to SEA for Aug 7, Returning on the 9th. It continually shows me $212 RT out of PIT and $272 out of MGW (my local airport). Of course, those fares are never available... but they remain, even as the actual airfare goes up and down. Those are supposed to be the 'lowest published price' numbers...

My question is... have the airlines caught on to Farecompare, and started "publishing" lowball fares that are never really available? Also... my 'email alerts' arn't working at all. Nothing comes through.

Anyone else using Farecompare these days with any luck? Can anyone explain what 'lowest published price' really means? Lowest published WHEN? EVER? Or since the last dissemination of prices from ATPCO? (which would be much more useful!) Bottom line so far.... Farecompare has yet to show me a better price than travelocity... or even the promised earlier notification of a fare.

Thoughts?
--Mike

Stumbled across Farecompare a while back and have been trying to find a good fare from PIT to SEA for Aug 7, Returning on the 9th. It continually shows me $212 RT out of PIT and $272 out of MGW (my local airport). Of course, those fares are never available... but they remain, even as the actual airfare goes up and down. Those are supposed to be the 'lowest published price' numbers..And they are, in fact, "'lowest published" Fares. But those fares cannot [currently] be purchased for your travel dates, due to the lack of Availability (e.g. looking at the $158 USD UA fare SR14KN, there is no S-class availability on 07 Aug)

BTW, welcome to FT!

You can find a step-by-step guide at http://Help.KVSTool.com/#Using

[KVS Availability Tool 3.5.9910/Diamond - Apollo: Availability/ITN/US-ARL] (http://www.KVSTool.com/?R)
PIT Pittsburgh Int'l Apt PA US [KPIT]
SEA Seattle/Tacoma Int'l WA US [KSEA]
FRI 07 Aug 2009

Carrier Flight From Depart To Arrive A/C St Availability
--------- ------ ---- -------- ---- -------- --- -- -----------------------------------------------------------
UA/US 2642 PIT 07:25 CLT 08:48 321 0 F9 Y9 B9 M9 E9 U9 H9 Q9 V9 W9 S9 T6 K6 L0 G9 P9 A9
-> UA/US 2111 CLT 09:40 SEA 12:17 321 0 F7 Y0 B9 M9 E9 U9 H9 Q9 V0 W0 S0 T0 K0 L0 G2 P7 A6
UA 697 PIT 08:14 ORD 08:47 752 0 F9 Y9 B9 M9 E9 U9 H9 Q9 V0 W0 S0 T0 K9 L0 G0 P9 A9
-> UA 710 ORD 09:45 SEA 12:14 752 0 F9 Y9 B9 M9 E9 U9 H9 Q9 V0 W0 S0 T0 K9 L0 G0 P9 A9
UA/S5 7559 PIT 08:32 DEN 09:53 E70 0 F6 Y9 B9 M9 E9 U9 H9 Q9 V0 W0 S0 T0 K9 L0 G0 P6 A6
-> UA 403 DEN 11:47 SEA 13:37 752 0 F9 C9 Y9 B9 M9 E9 U9 H9 Q9 V0 W0 S0 T0 K9 L0 G0 P9 A9 D9 Z9
UA 793 PIT 10:38 ORD 11:18 320 0 F9 Y9 B9 M9 E9 U9 H9 Q9 V0 W0 S0 T0 K9 L0 G0 P9 A9
-> UA 664 ORD 11:55 SEA 14:21 752 0 F9 Y9 B9 M9 E9 U9 H9 Q9 V0 W0 S0 T0 K9 L0 G0 P9 A9

So... Does that mean that the low fare shown is the lowest published fare for some other day besides Sept. 7th? That fare is available SOMETIME, so farecompare throws it up there, but it's not actually available on the day I want to travel? What a crock.

It's one more example of completely useless information. It's like traveolcity.com's incredibly stupid calendars that show you all kinds of green dates where your fare is supposed to be available... until you click on it... then it refreshes with an X on your date, and some other dates in green. Rinse. Repeat. Scream. Rinse. Repeat. Scream. Can't someone make a fare search site without this crap? Just show me what matters!

I did not like Farecompare.com, and I did not find it useful at all. I sign up for emails, never got any.
I like kayak.com

IuLiA

So... Does that mean that the low fare shown is the lowest published fare for some other day besides Sept. 7th?It's the lowest published fare for that city pair and carrier, period.

That fare is available SOMETIME, so farecompare throws it up thereOnce again, the published fare display has nothing to do with availability.

but it's not actually available on the day I want to travel?According to availability data, the airline is not [as of that particular moment in time] willing to allow the use of that fare on those specific flight(s).

What a crock.That's how airline pricing has been working for the last 30+ years.

It's one more example of completely useless information.Actually, the information itself is extremely valuable, just not for someone who needs to depart on a particular day.

So... Does that mean that the low fare shown is the lowest published fare for some other day besides Sept. 7th? That fare is available SOMETIME, so farecompare throws it up there, but it's not actually available on the day I want to travel? What a crock.

It's one more example of completely useless information. It's like traveolcity.com's incredibly stupid calendars that show you all kinds of green dates where your fare is supposed to be available... until you click on it... then it refreshes with an X on your date, and some other dates in green. Rinse. Repeat. Scream. Rinse. Repeat. Scream. Can't someone make a fare search site without this crap? Just show me what matters!

My sentiments exactly! Thanks for posting this thread. I have been following several fares to LAX via farecompare for months and I also noticed that everytime I attempted to claim the fare it couldn't be found.

:td: to farecompare in my books.

:td: to farecompare in my books.

I'm always confused by this kind of sentiment. Farecompare doesn't promise to show you available fares. It promises to deliver published fares and it delivers on that promise.

If you can't derive value from that (and consequently the site), it certainly isn't a thumbs down situation. A large number of people find this website very useful.

It's the lowest published fare for that city pair and carrier, period.

Once again, the published fare display has nothing to do with availability.


Then it is pretty useless as a booking tool, you have to admit. It would be like a rental car agency that advertised $1 per day specials. Sure, the special is not an illegitimate claim since they have one single car that rents for $1/day, but the other 499 cars on the lot rent for $79/day and up. It is less than helpful, to say the least, when searching for fares on a specific day. Travelocity's calendar that appears to be available until you click on it is equally unhelpful. Why not just show when fares are available, period?

I'm always confused by this kind of sentiment. Farecompare doesn't promise to show you available fares. It promises to deliver published fares and it delivers on that promise.

If you can't derive value from that (and consequently the site), it certainly isn't a thumbs down situation. A large number of people find this website very useful.

Maybe many people do find value from this site and that is certainly their opinion. However, for my purposes it truly did not deliver. Farecompare.com stated that it would send an alert when the fare was within the threshold I had set. It would indeed send the alerts but the the fares would never be found. How is that helpful? What good is knowing that somewhere there might have been a "published" low fare but you never would have been or never will be able to get it? I just don't see the point.

I personally had more success using the searches on tripadvisor, kayak, and orbitz.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and if farecompare works for you then that is good. However from my personal experience farecompare was a disappointment.

Since learning how to use itasoftware.com's search engine, I have learned to appreciate the value of these published fares. I would push back on the negative comments by asking those who are unhappy, what does "no available seats" mean. I fly across the country frequently. The low fare flights are typically not plentiful and easily found through the airline search engines, but the published fare rules offer far more possibilities than the search engines ever consider and explore. Once I realized this, and learned how to use itasoftware.com's search language, I started finding a lot more cases where it was possible to get from A to B at the minimum fare. (Coincidentally, my bump frequency has dropped too. The airlines DO know pretty well which flights will be less than full and often price the seats on those flights accordingly). I also learned that where you set your intermediary points when building your itinerary could also affect the booking class of the journey.

Since I am limited when I can fly and I do not want to spend hours looking for a fare that I can book I have quit looking at Farecompare. I want to know what fares I can book not what is published.

I use it because I can find "where can I go from airport A at the cheapest PPM". Whether it's available or not is another story but at least I know that from CAE, flights are generally more expensive than FLO.

HTSC

My take is that enough people like FC, so there must be a way to use it properly, but i haven't found it.

Their website keeps undoing my filters and selections. For example, I narrow down to AA fares, choose a departure date, choose a return date, click, and find that FC is returning all fares on all airlines! So what was the point of all those filters selecting airlines and airfares? :confused: Maybe somebody from FC explain how to use their site.

My take is that enough people like FC, so there must be a way to use it properly, but i haven't found it.

Their website keeps undoing my filters and selections. For example, I narrow down to AA fares, choose a departure date, choose a return date, click, and find that FC is returning all fares on all airlines! So what was the point of all those filters selecting airlines and airfares? :confused: Maybe somebody from FC explain how to use their site.

Yup, I find FC's website to be beyond poor.

Then it is pretty useless as a booking tool, you have to admit.
Well, it's not a booking Tool, and it's not for everyone -- you really have to know what you are doing when you use it. There is a step-by-step guide available at http://Help.KVSTool.com/#Using, which explains the entire process.

People who are frustrated with FC are, invariably, those who are not aware of these steps and/or their significance.