Originally Posted by Zhivago

I thought BA was bad, but BMI is appalling!

I spent more than 2 hours yesterday trying to book LHR-TBS-LHR for my wife. The online booking engine first offered a return fare of £338. When I completed payment, the fare was no longer available, so I put the transaction through again and this time was offered a fare of £370. Again, I went through payment, and again was told the fare was no longer available. Back to the start, and I was offered the £338 fare again! Assuming that maybe a travel agent had held the seat and released it, I went through payment for a third time. Again, the fare was no longer available. On the fourth attempt, I was quoted £390. Tried to pay. No longer available. Tried again, £338. No longer available... you get the idea. After 7 attempts like this, I called the ICC. They quoted me £460, even though the web site was now quoting me £338. They duplicated the booking via the website and confirmed the £338 fare, but then couldn't book it. Round and round and round in circles, for a total of something like 14 attempts to book, each resulting in the 'no more availability' message!

I fully accept that availability can change whilst a booking is going through, but surely not this many times on the run!

The ICC were quite unhelpful about the whole thing, and would only sell me the £460 fare, which I objected to, having been offered a lower fare so many times (including by the ICC). In the end, I successfully booked the £370 fare online, but only by selecting different dates for my wife's journey.

The end result of all this is, I won't be going out of my way either to use or recommend BMI to friends and family, but will only use them when I absolutely have no choice. Given that I was going to switch from BA to BMI on the Moscow route, that is revenue lost to BMI, revenue retained for BA.