Found a REALLY great price on Delta on several days in late april/early may (Economy, <$300 roundtrip between Cali to NY) using ita matrix to scan for the cheapest rates across several different airports near my travel destination (flexible dates so I had many options for date and airport)

On attempting to book flights using BOTH the Chase travel site and the Delta web site for 6 different days, the price would increase/flight no longer available before I could complete the transaction.

This ONLY happened on the dates I tried to book flights on, and the changes were also reflected on ita matrix a few minutes later. NONE of the days that i did not attempt to book flights on increased in price. The prices are still increased several hours later. Clearing cookies had NO effect.

I finally did get the correct rate on the 7th attempt (7th different day!) when I just decided to see how fast I could enter traveler information for all 4 members of my family, presumably prior to Delta changing the price on me again.

So, what is going on here? Clearly there was not a mass purchase of tickets ONLY on the days that I tried to book. This happened 6 consecutive times!!!! The EXACT same seats are still listed as available on the flights that the prices were increased on, confirming? that no one else bought flights.

This seems like a clear attempt at BAIT and SWITCH by Delta, embedded into their software algorithms.

Just curious about everyone else's experiences, and more importantly a way to beat this type of manipulation in the future (e.g. how did i trip the "increase rate flag").