Last night, after I wrote my last post, I was actually worried that I might have been too harsh. Thanks for taking care of that.

To address your points:

* PR - We actually spend a lot of effort on positive PR for ExpertFlyer. Maybe you've read some of these: http://www.expertflyer.com/expertflyer-news

BTW, we don't doctor our PR posts to remove mention of any competing service. Yes, we noticed that, classy. (Original video: http://bit.ly/dxiNqz Doctored one: http://bit.ly/akQMWv)

* "the KVS Tool does not do "screen-scraping", and never did." Your own User Agreement says otherwise:
Taking data from websites and using it in your application is the definition of screen scraping. Especially if they're not your websites.

* EF handles availability POS by choosing a GDS ahead of time. We use US based ones and a UK based one. One of the things we would like to do is allow users to change that on the fly. Based on the information on your website, your users also have 2 choices, USA or Japan.

* "Except that you cannot see any award or upgrade inventory for BA or CX or SQ"
Do you not know what the word OR means? As I previously said: "So by using ExpertFlyer you can see either award/upgrade inventory or regular inventory farther ahead..."

Say what you want, but none of your regular availability or Alliance award availability methods show anything beyond 331 days. Only UA, CX, and M&M can do that, and for those, users can get the same information on those websites directly, no tool required.

The other thing you can't do with KVS is specify any connecting cities. EF allows you to specify up to 2. Basics first.

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Now, you want to talk about price? Ok. First, when you take what isn't yours and don't pay for it, the cost is naturally $0. ExpertFlyer has fixed costs (running the business, servers, payroll, etc) and variable costs (GDS data). KVS doesn't pay for data, the websites it screen scrapes from do. It's not surprising that a business that doesn't have to pay any incremental costs for each unit sold can undercut their competition. It was different back when KVS was free, but that isn't the case anymore.

ExpertFlyer hasn't raised prices since our January 2005 launch. KVS on the other hand, recently eliminated it's Light version (which costed less). You used the loss of the ITN availability methods to charge your customers more, even though you don't pay for any of the GDS data regardless of method.

So who is paying for the GDS data? (Airline data is not free) Well that's the airlines and, more importantly, independent travel agents that operate the websites listed in my last post. We can debate feature sets all day long, but here's the real problem.

For example, as I previously mentioned the Sabre DotRes fares method screen scrapes from this website: https://ww3.dotres.com/meridia?posid=7Y5A Who are they? They are United Fairfax Travel, a brick-and-mortar travel agency in Fairfax Virginia. Say hi: http://www.ufxtravel.com/default.asp?sid=9068&pid=11545

Now as many of you know, travel agencies have been squeezed by the airlines in the last 5-10 years, it's not easy for them to stay in business these days. What doesn't make it any easier is the amount they have to spend in additional data costs because the KVS tool screen scrapes from their booking website.

How much? Using last months ExpertFlyer Fare Information transactions as a guide, and knowing how much fare and fare rules queries on Sabre cost, we calculate that KVS takes about $7,000 a year from their bottom line. That's real money, money that they now don't have to pay employees, pay bills, expand their business, etc. Normally travel agencies aren't charged for data as long as there are bookings after the searches (what's called a look to book ratio) however since the KVS tool doesn't give any type of payment, attribution, or link to their website so that maybe they can have a chance to get a booking or two out of it, it's all cost for them. Yes you can get the data by going to their website directly as well, but at least then they have a chance to get a booking from it. Maybe you should send them a thank you note, this isn't a faceless airline, I'm sure they will read it.

So you want to talk about what's in "bad taste"? How about you thinking it's ok to keep 100% of your revenues while sticking random unsuspecting travel agencies with the bill for the data that you take from their websites without them even knowing. Maybe you can find a term for that on Wikipedia too.

fozz and bhatnasx, you're welcome.