Why does the Co website pull this ?
2 days ago I tried to purchase 4 seats from Fll to Ewr for a family trip.
(12/11/08 thru 12/18/08 )
Both airports are close to destinations for me so Co is always my first choice.
As I go thru the reservation process I obtain quotes of $224 RT/ticket and that both departute and return flights are available at times I require.
After selecting my departing flight the next screen (which previously showed several return flights at the quoted price) now have a Different (higher $80/ticket) price to book! I can see this happening late at night when updates occur but this was at 3PM!

How/Why often does this happen in the middle of the reservation process?
Is it just a big Bait & Switch scam? IS Co TRYING to lose business?
After calling Co web help and getting an "I dont really know why this happened answer".
I rebooked on AA from PBI. Not the airport I wanted at either end but the price did not change during the reservation!

Result the Co website switcheroo lost Co 4 rt tickets!

this is not correct, when you select the 2nd flight it also lists the price modification, you sometimes have to look down the page to find the lowest price.

Only in the case where the lower cost is for a strip with stops. I have never seen a lower price non-stop return flight be listed lower on the page. And I'll go ahead and say it would be very rare for a EWR-FLL itinerary with stops to come in cheaper than a non-stop.

I had previously checked the returns for the same lowest price and found several at that price but they changed when I went to book the tickets
Maybe its a glitch but it did happen

All returns were non stops

I have seen a lower price 1 stop(all my flights are one stop unless hitting connection to IAH only) a number of times lower on the page.

The only time I've encountered bait & switch is to the down side. I'll go through the entire process on the schedule screen, pick the best price and hit continue and a lower price invariably pops up.
I think what happened to you was slowness. Someone beat you to the draw and hit "purchase" just before you did and you got hosed as there were no seats left in that class of service?????

This has happened to me more than a few times also. I have never experienced that the op states happened to them.

This or something similar has happened to me recently as well. I searched flights, then searched alternatives, then back to the original search and they are more expensive, all within the same session. Then I found that if I cleared my computer cache and cookies and then tried the search again the lower proce was back. I was not logged into my account then---when I have done it logged in, searched, and then gotten the higher price when I return to the original options, and then got the lower price logged out.

It seems the co.com was using the cookies to know what I had searched and then raised the price when I returned to that route. Of course, it could have all been coincidence due to other customer's actions.

I was looking at a MR to the UK and selecting "nearby airports" it showed me $120 to BHM which is ridiculously cheap except you could not book it at that price. Once you hit the link it went to $300+. Bait 'n switch but probably not intentional, just a bug. Fees were in addition to the base fare.