Originally Posted by
Bradhattan
Edit: Mods, please move, I didn't know which thread to put this in)
I have used the Aadvantagehotels.com website a few times a year. Today while searching for hotels in Key West, I would find a property I liked and at the mileage/LP earning rate that I liked. However, once you click through to purchase, the mileage/LP offer reduces by several thousand. This annoyed me so I wrote to Aadvantagehotels.com to complain about what I felt were bait and switch practices.
When I complained via Aadvantagehotels.com, they gave boilerplate dynamic pricing, frustrating, blah blah, "but your offer may actually increase once you proceed". Yeah right!
I have now complained directly to American Airlines about their vendors "sullying" the AA brand through non-friendly customer practices. While I realize it won't do much, I figured I would approach it with brand damage vs upset customer. LOL.
I also filed a FTC complaint. Nothing will happen, but I feel slightly better now.
I have seen the same thing - sometimes it goes up but often down. I have no inside insight to this, but being in IT industry for decades I have a theory. To make searches faster, the site caches price and miles info periodically because otherwise, the system would have to make excessive requests to external systems and it would be slow. When you truly want to consider a property, a detailed request to made to get accurate (ie latest) pricing info.
I think that even direct booking sites like Marriott can do the same thing with prices, though their prices may be less volatile as it is not a third party site.
likely it is not any intent to mislead, just a technical reality.