Unable to book a flight on the A3 website
 

So I've tried on two different PCs using three different browsers. No luck. Sometimes I get as far as providing credit card information, but I always get an error message after hitting "book". Called A3, they seem to be clueless ("call your bank", "use Firefox and delete your browser's history").

Any advice? Should I just eat the €20 for telephone bookings seeing that prices will likely go up after tomorrow?

On a side note, no better luck on my (Android) smartphone - the app refuses to cooperate, the mobile website (from a browser) pulls up fares that are 2/3x more expensive than the ones I'm finding on my PC.

Why not try an OTA?

You are actually getting fares on the A3 website? Lucky .......!

The call centres are usually pretty clueless when it comes to understanding IT issues, though that's not unusual across many airlines I suspect.

I think many of us will have seen the same problem where it just won't accept payment. I've had some success with ringing up and getting them to waive the phone booking payment - ymmv.

Beware, however, that the bookings you've tried to make may have already reserved the cheaper fare buckets, so you'll be quoted higher fares over the phone. The agents do have the ability to cancel your previous attempts, so restoring the inventory, so if things aren't as you expect then ask them to check why.

What are you trying to book? Is it a companion-ticket by any chance? If so I've had the same problem but won't go into all the details in case it's not relevant. If not, then using another provider seems to be the answer - they're usually cheaper than booking direct anyway, in my experience.

Thanks for all the input. I just kept trying, and eventually succeeded in getting my trip booked (I think the Mastercard SecureCode check may make things worse as it triggers additional handovers - but then again, this works fine on most other websites).

Regarding OTA, the fares I found were at least 50% more than what A3 had on offer - I ended up booking what I think is a great fare CPH - RHO - CPH, €137.

One additional question: I could only apply my gold upgrades to three of the four segments. For the one where (for now) I'm in Y (A320), do I go for an exit row or row 3?

Personally I'd go for row 3. The legroom is possibly not as much as the exit row (though the difference is small), but still more than regular economy - which is plenty for me. The fact that you're at the front of the aircraft is much more important for me.

Just keep in mind that row 3 may not always be available.

Really? Any fare i saw was always cheaper via an OTA.

Am trying to book a companion ticket and although i enter the credit card details, get the verified-by-visa confirmation, then it says that my card details could not be confirmed (this when tried with 2 different cards!). Did you have a similar problem?

Yes that's exactly what happened to me several times. This seems to be the result of including non-eligible booking classes in the booking, so far as I can tell (some trial and error and guesswork, a little bad language and then an old thread on here that I can't find right now). Hidden somewhere in the ts&cs is a note that the companion ticket can only be used for the higher booking classes (not U,P,T,E) but it doesn't say this on the voucher or the main M&B info pages. So... if you include one of these booking classes, no error is generated until the very final stage of payment - after the "verified by Visa" checks in my case.

This seems a VERY bad design flaw in the system - to not pick up on this "error" earlier and to make it look like a card problem. OK, we're talking about Aegean IT, but even so... it's bad. Very frustrating. I can't even imagine how it's possible to write into application that doesn't check that the booking is "valid" until AFTER the payment authorization stage!

Try it with S class and above fares and it'll work just fine.

For my last domestic booking, I had to check the fares for nearly two weeks waiting for the lower fair buckets to fill before I could use my companion coupon (and by then, the other leg had gone up in price). They really need to have an option to manually book into higher fare buckets - but that's a long running gripe on many other threads too. Oh, and make the terms a bit clearer please!

I've given up with being annoyed with Aegean IT. I just accept it as it is, frown, and get on with it.

In my case, I never had any problem with my Greek cards (hundreds of bookings) but I simply can't use the two Italian ones: "a problem occurred, please try again later" (tens of bookings). This message, obviously, comes after having completed everything and their system has, supposedly, checked my cc. A3 blames my bank in Italy, my bank in Italy blames A3. Mind you, when using the Italian cc at the airport in HER, everything is fine (it costs 20 additional Euros, though).

As Knobbgb writes, I just accept it as it is, frown, and get on with it preferring to use my Greek cc rather than paying the processing fee.

that's exactly the issue with me, but i think it's a major IT flaw. If you cannot use the coupons for lowest-far-classes, why go forward to the final stage and actually not say that you are unable to use the coupon for that reason but say that there was a credit card error? (rhetoric question)