Problem with purchase on CO.COM
 

All,
I had a problem today with purchasing a ticket on continental.com which you may all want to know about.

I put a reservation on "reserve" on Friday and I purchased it yesterday. The website said everything was fine.

Today I logged on to check seat maps for my flights through my reservation. Under the Manage Reservations page, it said "This itinerary is purchased." When you clicked on the reservation, it said that it was not purchased. I immediately called Continental. They can't tell me what went wrong other than, "Sometimes computers don't talk nice to each other."

So be careful when purchasing on co.com. It might tell you that your reservation is purchased and everything went through OK, but click on the actual reservation to make sure it did! I don't know if this problem only occurs with reservations that were on reserve or if it could happen to a reservation you're buying immediately after doing a search.

I noticed that the fare I was being offered was now available for the first flight of the day (originally it was $200 more), so I mentioned it to the CSR. As a "customer service gesture" (her words), she put me on the earlier flight for the same price without the $100 fee.

-Rob

btw...a little more info.

One thing I noticed yesterday was the reservation was booked in K class. No way the K class reservation was going to cost what I was quoted (<$300). I thought I found a steal somewhere.

That may have something to do with it. The computer saw the reservation in K and spit it out because the actual K fare should have been greater than $500.

Now I'm booked in 'V' class. Chances of an upgrade are slim to none. Darn http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Thanks for the tip. I found that one night just after the 'midnight' deadline the fare prices went way up for one of my tickets, I then tried to purchase my originally priced ticket for hundreds less around 12:10am and lo and behold it went through and I flew the itinerary no problem so sometimes the lack of computer talk may be a good thing or at least it was in my case http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

They have a 59 minute grace period.
So you do not have to worry til 12:59 http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

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Viele Grüße

Oliver

This happened once to me before. The best plan of action is the print the confirmation page on co.com as soon as you purchase the ticket. Then, wait for the e-mail confirmation. If you don't get the e-mail confirmation within 5-10 minutes, the computers probably didn't talk nice to each other.

If this happens, call the internet help desk and they'll tell you to fax the confirmation (which you printed out) in to them. They'll generally honor your price, but try to "downgrade" your fare bucket to a lower one. Since most non-elites don't care about fare class, they get away with it. If you do care (esp with new EQM rules in 2004), kindly ask for the same bucket shown on your confirmation. They'll initially push back, but eventually honor this as well.

This process annoyed me at first, but it's really no different than how one should handle any online transaction, IMHO.

Well I noticed lately that the first pricing page will show you a are booked in B but when the email comes it will show all in Q (which is the "correct" fareclass.

Is there any way to have them rebook it in B?

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Viele Grüße

Oliver