I tried to claim the guarantee today and got nada. Here is the story.
I priced an itinerary on CO at Travelocity. The site gave me a price and noted that there were 2 seats left priced like this: $295.82 base price, $54.38 tax, $5.00 fee, total $355.20. I went to CO's website and priced the same intinerary and got $329.00 base price, $32.20 tax and fee for a total of $361.20. I called CO's support line for the guarantee and the gentleman said that the guarantee is based on the base price and not the total. So that is a $33.18 difference. I bought the ticket on CO and called the guarantee number right away. The person on the line, an Esra, said that she would check the Travelocity pricing to see if I qualified. She checked the res. on CO saying - it hasn't even ticketed yet. Then she took a while looking on Travelocity. I helped her through the steps to see the pricing but it took what I thought an inordinately long time for her to do so. She was complaining about slow speed on the net. It was perfectly fast for me. By the time she brought it up it was no longer the same price and had gone up. She would not honor the guarantee because she could not confirm that it existed at the time I purchased.
Obviously since I bought one of the last seats on the bus, my purchase changed the pricing. I don't think that there were any other seats on the plane because when I went to choose seating there were no other options other than the assigned seating. Esra offered to cancel my purchase. So helpful.
My observations are these - one she didn't know the guarantee was based on the base price and not the total price (must be $10 or more difference from competitor's base price). She had to check with someone else to find out that that was the rule. She then told me that she was the supervisor of the department when I asked to speak to one. Two - the base price when I first priced it on Continental was $329.00 and $32 tax, but when I purchased the ticket from that same point on the screen the base price changed to $306.05 and tax to $55.15. Isn't that strange?

I told Esra that I should have purchased from Travelocity in the first place seeing as Continental wouldn't honor the price guarantee. Her reponse was well if you had read the guarantee you would see that it tells you to buy it elsewhere if you find it cheaper. What!!??? I thought that the guarantee was to assure you that if you bought it on Continental that you would be certain to have them stand behind their low price guarantee - not that you should buy somewhere else.

What do you all think about this? Am I SOL or should I take the time to write a letter?

Thanks much,
Frenchie Flyer