FlyerTalker7654

Hi all,

My mum wants to come out to SFO for a week from London in Feb. (dates are depart London Feb 18th depart SFO Feb 26th).

I checked on ITA and the cheapest indirect flight was £555 with United.

I came past Kayak (which I have never used before) and out of interest did a quick search. I was shocked at what I found. It showed me the cheapest flight with Virgin which was connecting (obviously a Delta code share) at £503. I clicked on the link and it took me to a company called eDreams. I could have put in the passenger details and payment details and made the booking.

I went back to ITA and the cheapest connecting with Virgin was showing at £603 with Delta at £635.

I went back to the original Kayak serach and there were other companies offering lower prices as well. A search on Virgin's website didnt show anything anywhere near that price. The same on expedia.

So my question: is this company a scam? How can some random company have much cheaper prices then say, expedia?

Is it me or am I missing something here?

Welcome any thoughts.

Cheers

^

thesaints

i wouldn't call kayak a "random company". It is a search engine for fares, they don't sell you a ticket themselves.
Try to select the lower fare on Kayak. Chances are that going through the process you will eventually reach "fare no longer available"

FlyerTalker7654

eh? I said the random company was called eDreams. Kayak sent me to their website.

So are you saying that had I put my credit card details into the page along with all the other details needed it would have come back as 'fare no longer available'?

thesaints

Sorry, had skipped the edreams part. In my experience kayak should bring you to the airline website.
Anyway, if you keep close watch on your cc bill, you can simply dispute charges in case it is a scam.

woggledog

Avoid eDreams. Many times they don't confirm properly with the airline until the week before your flight, so you won't get your ticket numbers, etc….. For the sake of £50….

irishguy28

eDreams is not some "random company". It is one of the five main brands operated by Odigeo, Europe's largest online travel agency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ODIGEO

I'm not really sure what the issue is here. Comparison sites like Skyscanner and Kayak simply would not exist if different websites/agencies did not charge different prices for the same flights; or if the airline themselves always had the cheapest fare. And the fare you obtained isn't a worryingly cheap fare, either. For your given dates, Skyscanner currently shows £514.76 on VA (indirect) booked via BudgetAir.co.uk is the cheapest available ticket. Flights from Dublin on the same dates come in at £392 on British Airways...I know where I would start my journey!

beardedgeologist

Prices on eDreams are sometimes wrong though...

http://www.flyertalk.com/story/briti...r-flights.html

$38,435,849,232.71. That’s how much Marion Sessions was about to pay for two tickets for flights between Birmingham, England, and Faro, Portugal. Sessions, who runs two vacation cottages with her husband in Derbyshire, recounted on her blog, Tom’s Barn, how she almost paid the absurd fare.

FlyerTalker7654

Update: So I rang up Flight Center and they quoted me a price over 600GBP. The lady then said they can match any price and I showed her the price I had found on kayak and eDreams. She was able to price match it right away.

So is the reason that these low prices do not appear on expedia, ITA etc because the big companies rely on their reputation to make more money selling at the higher prices? Hence so many companies saying 'we will price match any flight'...

I have limited understanding on how it all works but I was under the impression that airlines do not pay commission to travel agents any more, however if they are giving them very low prices for fares then commission does not really matter.

UKtravelbear

The last couple of flights that I bought were via expedia rather than direct. I was flying in J so wasn't needing to be in a specific fare bucket to upgrade so cheaper was best!

The price of the flight was the same as buying direct but expedia charged me a straight £10 admin fee. This was a lot cheaper than the % fee the airline wanted to charge me.

I also got some cashback as well that wasn't available from the airline.

No idea how they made any money from me - perhaps the £10 was more than enough to pay the cc charges and still leave them quids on.

Whilst I do advocate shopping around I do tend to stick to the known brands. Looking at e-dreams they don't have a UK postal address (a PO box number to me does not count) and only an 0871 phone number.

UKtravelbear

But yes in general TA commissions have gone out of the window