smurf40894089

Is any one else experiencing this in the Asia market on CX ?
Recently i have noticed when trying to book J class semi flex and flex fares Asia to USA or Canada you type in your dates and up comes the dates layout with cheapest J fare option for dates you're travelling.
You then select the appropriate fare/dates for your travel and move to next page to select flights at what you assumed was the fare you selected from previous page.
What they don't spell out "clearly" is the only flight options that get the fare you selected from previous page have a small red marker at bottom right. Now sometimes there can be heaps of little red markers and what i'm recently discovering is 8 times out of 10 there are no red markers at the price level I've selected even if its a FLEX J fare.
You'd assume as you have selected a specific fare level the system only display flight options at that fare level, seems NOT the case, Even on a flex J class fare the difference between a flight with the red dash and no red dash can be up to 5KUSD which you only find out once you've selected your flights to then discover the HUGE fare difference.
Why show date and fare options when you're not going to follow through with offering flights at the fare level quoted on the selection page, this seems to be getting worse and worse.
Have called CX Plat hotline to be told oh well thats the way it is deal with it.
Thoughts ??

FlyPointyEnd

CX doesn't have a Plat hotline.

smurf40894089

ok MP dedicated Diamond number

LondonElite

I'm confused by what you wrote, but I don't think this is a case of bait and switch, since you can clearly distinguish between the different fare features before you buy.

smurf40894089

But the offered fare on the selection page does not reflect reality when you move to flight selection on next page, therefore why offer the fares and flight options if they are in fact only available at a MUCH higher price

FlyPointyEnd

You might be doing something wrong because I tried making a booking just now and it works fine.



You have to make sure that when you pick out the specific flight, you need to select the ones with the red marker on the lower right of the boxes. If you scroll to the end of the image you can see it is still HKD31,000

smurf40894089

Doesn't always look like that especially the greyed out flight options, try selecting one of the non greyed out apart from red flagged see how you go, most of the time i'm getting non greyed out then slapped with Huge fare change for selecting the fare i thought matched the flight i selected

Cambo

When selecting a greyed box, it'll adjust the selected fare at the top. Manually selecting the fare at the top ungreys the connection fields, once the selected fare is higher or equal then available tickets in the connections field.

smurf40894089

yup know that as well my point is why offer fares on the initial landing page that aren't available at that fare level on the flight selection page, why not just show flights available at the fare you have selected ?

osotoc

Since the website indicates how to find the "lowest fare," CX likely figures you can choose that one or take a gander at the other offerings for those days.
I don't think CX is trying to bait and switch anyone. I'm sure it would be a lot easier on the buyer if they ONLY showed the lowest price and nothing else.
But as CX wants to sell airline tickets, showing everything and letting the buyer decide works best for them.
I think most airlines do this: show all the flights and combos and you can sort by cheapest fare (if available that day).

sxc

Are you able to post screenshots of what you're seeing? I'm confused.

watery

Because some people may then decide to not like the timings of the cheapest flights and eventually decides to pay a little (sometimes a lot) more for other flights that suit better.
For your identification purpose, the non-cheapest fare levels are already indicated as greyed out/missing red flag at bottom right, so quite well indicated already? Since some routings can have many alternatives especially involving other airlines, putting all possible flight prices at the top might make the list too long/hard to read.

QRC3288

OP: Select the box that says "only show combinations with lowest fare" or something like that.

I think what the OP is referring to, is this:

1.) You search, calendar comes up, many dates have red flags. Red flags mean "lowest fare on this date combo".
2.) You click on one of the lower fare combos. Then, a bunch of flights come up. Often, most of those flights are NOT the lowest fare combo.
-> To make things more confusing now, post recent IT changes, TONS of flights show up now, I'm seeing way more codeshare options / flights without the class I want.
-> Case in point, I was looking for flights HKG-Tokyo in F. I really just wanted to buy HKG-HND, obviously this isn't my first rodeo and I know those are the only flights with F, or maybe I assumed JAL could have one a day (apparently they don't). But CX showed me EVERY flight to Tokyo, with a little notation for each. If I don't engage in this forum, I bet I could be easily fooled on that. Same situation when I was recently trying to buy F to PVG, I know sometimes there are a few flights a day on KA with it. But CX/KA show everything. It's actually quite confusing since F isn't offered on most flights. I'm certain they're fooling people who aren't as into this for a hobby as we are.
3.) It is very easy to not click the cheapest fare combo. I think this is what the OP is referring to. Then you click through a few times, and presto the fare is 1.5-2x what you thought. I had this happen to me a few weeks ago buying a TPE-HKG ticket for me and the Mrs. I thought the fare would be 25k or so total, but when I clicked through it was 35k. I had accidentally done what the OP describes.

I don't actually think it's bait and switch though. I just think CX IT seems not very clever. You can figure it out though. Just frustrating.

DieselYVR

I agree and found this very unclear and frustrating when the website change was first implemented. Now that I'm used to the format it's fine. I agree this could help upsell people to their more preferred timings but I could also see the lack of clarity driving people away.

osotoc

It's all about the upsell!