Originally Posted by
SmeltaIsReady
There is little doubt in my mind that this is intentional and that they easily make a few extra tens of thousands every day from chumps. Call it "bait and switch" or "false advertising" or whatever. But the moral of the story is that if you have to fly Delta, make your arrangements the old fashioned way, and keep one eye on your wallet.
If that were the case this thread would be full of such reports, instead of a few isolated incidents. I have seen this message too, but only when clicking through from Google Flights and/or constructing something complicated on ITA.
This could be due to cached results; but in one case I got the same "prices have gone up" over a period of several days, so that couldn't have been the explanation. But I have subsequently seen where ITA puts together an itinerary for a much lower price because it is not taking married segments into account, and an EF search shows that the full trip is not available in the indicated booking class.
I agree in the latter case it would be nice if DL figured that out on the first page rather than the checkout page that what you're trying to do does not have inventory or violates fare rules, but I don't think it rises to the level of "scam".
Welcome to FlyerTalk, in any case
