Does farecompare ever work?
 

I was just looking on fare compare for a trip that would get me to 75k for the year. There are lots of good fares on there and a lot of pop ups, but every time I look up a fare, it's pure fantasy. You choose two days and it will list a fare for something like $219, but then when you search for the fare, it's magically $665. Repeat ad nauseum. Does this site ever work? It is an interesting concept, but a waste of time to me.

Does it <ever> work? Yes. :)

I usually reference his site, realize the cheap fares, then leave his site to travelocity and do a "flex dates" search to find specific days the cheap fares he found.

Although I think Rick's approach of blasting his site with ads all over the place is a bit much (one step away from that annoying lady at biddingfortravel - demanding you use her click-thru's), I do occasionally click on them since he does deserve some credit for at least the initial low fare find.

One reason the difference in fares: his site provides advance announcement of low fares which you usually can't book for a couple hours after the fact.

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I used it a lot for a 2-week period (a few hours every few days just playing around with the site), it never worked and just like the OP experienced the fares increased. It's an okay site to consider numerous destinations and for other estimates but the fares are never right so I rarely use it and wouldn't recommend it.

Thanks for the input. I'm not sure how Rick is, but it's about the ugliest site on the face of the planet. I have no problem with sites with ads, but he makes it look like I went to cn.com instead of cnn.com. The site looks more like spam than something legit. I'm not sure that someone who makes a site like that deserves a click through at all.

I don't think that all of those fares that I looked at for this weekend are going to magically drop to next to nothing within a few hours. I think the site just doesn't work. I have no doubt that the SJU routes WERE low some time ago, but they aren't now and whatever he uses to come up with the rates is seriously outdated.

The flyertalk Farecompare tool is an invaluable resource when looking for fares.

Farecompare shows fares that are filed between specific cities but when it shows you prices it does not discern your travel dates with the filed fare. You have to do a bit of work on your own with ITA or whatever your other research tools are.


Once you learn how to use farecompare flyertalk tool you will not use the rest of the website.



Halothane

Farecompare is not a resource for booking last minute tickets. It's a better resource for finding fares that are filed between city pairs. You can then take that fare basis and obtain the routing rules, fare rules, dates, etc.


Halothane