Yesterday I "Purchased" one rtn ticket from LAX to Orlando, Florida. They have not been ticketed as yet. My booking has the following note in my file:


"Fares are not guaranteed until tickets are issued and are subject to airline's confirmation. Your ticket(s) will be issued by the Customer Service Centre once airline confirmation has been received. Once ticketed, changes must be made by the Customer Service Centre. Tickets must be purchased online to ensure compliance with all fare rules and restrictions."

Whats all this about! I purchase, travelocity has the option of not ticketing if I get a good deal. I hope this is not another Estonian Fiasco. I also lost out on that one as well.

Comments!
Dave, London, UK

Dave:

I think this is a standard disclaimer that Travelocity includes on all its confirmations. I have not yet had a problem with a ticket issuing, though I have booked through Travelocity fewer than five (5) times.

If you're really concerned that you may miss out on the fare, call the airline directly and ask if you appear as a ticketed passenger on the flight(s) in question. I did this with US just last week (I found a fare on Travelocity that was 1/5 of any other fare I could find) and the airline was able to find me mere minutes after I completed the purchase on Travelocity.

Good luck.

Mike

dupe


[This message has been edited by Mikey likes it (edited 05-30-2001).]

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[This message has been edited by Mikey likes it (edited 05-30-2001).]

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[This message has been edited by Mikey likes it (edited 05-30-2001).]

Travelocity.co.uk still has not issued me my ticket from LAX-MCO with Delta. I checked my Delta reservation online under my FF acount number and my reservation is alive and CONFIRMED by Delta.

Can travelocity refuse to issue my ticket because it may have been a clerical error in uploading these fares. (I truely believe it was an attempt to compete with SouthWest Airlines).

When you call Delta, can they also confirm
the fare paid for the ticket? That might
also be a useful bit of information as well.

(I'm remembering the cheap Paris tickets on
United where, where people booking paper
tickets actually were charged the "correct"
price because in the time it took for the
extra step of ticketing the paper ticket,
the mistake fare had been removed from the
system...)

So based on this and the United deal, maybe
there should be a caveat to all the "paper
tickets rule" advice, which is that for
crazy fares, e-tickets are the way to
go... (of course, in this case, people
booking more than one ticket didn't have
an option).

Dan

First post to this forum, I'm popping my Flyer Talk Cherry! :-)

Everyone who has posted has mentioned booking through an internet type service, i.e., Travelocity, Delta website, etc. If you had booked with a human travel agent (yes we still do exist) during the time frame that the "sale" fare was in force, we could run your ticket after the "sale" expired without hassles. It would have to be the same day the reservation was made; the airlines customer commitment policies do not extend to travel agent or website bookings. For a website travel agency to not allow tickets to be issued during the inadvertant "sale" is inexcusable. It's a simple keystroke to override the rules after the fare has been stored.

If the ITA software's site remains the booking engine for Orbitz, I'm not concerned about my future as a travel agent. I've checked it many times; yes, it gives great fares, but when you try to book it, the lowest booking class is rarely available. I can see Orbitz users being disillusioned quickly when they try to book the fare that is advertised, only to find that it's not available. When I've checked it, they have shown "L" class or "U" class on DL when only Y was available in Amadeus. So much for real time inventory!

That's my ramble for today FT'ers!

PBI Donna

---------------------------------------------A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.....Lao Tzu

Donna,

First let me say welcome to FT (even though it sounds like you�ve been lurking for a while). It�ll be interesting to get a travel agent�s perspective (there have been times when this would have been sorely needed in fact!).

You note that travel agents would have the ability to "hold" this fare after it had been pulled. Even if this is case, however, based on other threads here, it seems they would be more interested in reporting the "error" to the airline then issuing a ticket. Did you ever read the thread in the AA forum about the $373 fare from Estonia to OZ? That fare was available for a few days but got pulled after someone went to a travel agent to ticket their reservation and instead of ticketing, said TA quickly called QF to report it. Turned out that travel agents get rewarded by the airlines for reporting these "too low" fares, and penalized for ticketing them, and the general concensus was that in such cases it was best to AVOID a human travel agent and go through a web site where the automatization reduces the significance of the "human audit" factor.

Perhaps you can shed more light on this matter?

Yonatan

Hi Yonotan,

I've never heard of a reward being offered to travel agents to report obvious errors in fares. Maybe in different parts of the world that is true, but I've never heard of it in the 15 years I've been a TA in the USA.
We don't see goofs like this too often, but when we do, we get on the phone to inform our best clients and tell them to hurry. Of course, we take advantage sometimes too! :-)
Our CRS, Amadeus, honors all fares that are stored and ticket run the same day it is made (even after the fare gets pulled).

Sorry, I didn't see the thread about Estonia to OZ.

Yes, I've been lurking for a while, thanks for your kind welcome! :-)

Donna

No such fares now

No such fares now...

Donna,

I should have posted a link to the thread before, it�s at

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum71/HTML/001833.html

You�d better grab a sandwich before you start reading it if you choose to, it could take a while...

To make a very long story something approaching short, here�s a summary:
A fare of USD 3400 between Tallin and Australia was misentered by QF so it became about $340, plus another $35 in tax. Full Y, unlimited stopovers, at least 20k miles, and posted on FT, so you can imagine what followed .
For the next few days, people bought quite a few tickets through Travelocity, but at least one person abroad (maybe that�s the key word here) went to a travel agent to ticket it. The agent refused to ticket it, and reportedly notified QF, which pulled the fare. Travelocity, which had issued a few dozen tickets already, suddenly started calling all those who bought tickets to try to convince them QF won�t honor it so they should return the tickets.
It turned out that QF honored all such tickets and seemed quite happy to carry the pax and give them good treatment as they would to any full-Y pax. When Travelocity was unable to convince people that their tickets would not be honored, it seemed willing to buy them free discount-economy tickets in exchange for forfeiting the full-Y tickets.
This seemed to confirm what several people were saying which was that when a TA (in this case Travelocity) tickets a fares that seems to be an obvious error, the airline will bill him/her the difference between the erroneous and the "correct" fare, with refusal to pay resulting in the lose of the agent�s ability to continue selling the airline�s tickets. Getting billed $3000 per passenger flying on the $340 ticket certainly sounded like a plausible reason for Travelocity to try to get these tickets back or offer $1000 discount tickets instead.

So anyway, that�s why I would be a bit reluctant to go to a travel agent to ticket these fares.

If you have new light to shed on the issue, I�m sure many would of course love to hear it. I hope you become a regular poster - we could certainly use your input!

Yonatan

I finally got my lax-mco 65 pound tickets in the mail today from travelocity.co.uk

I was very doubtful that travelocity would issue this ticket (I too picked up a TLL-SYD booking but was never issued a ticket). However, it is very clear that travelocity.co.uk had to investigate this booking further as It took 6 days to ticket and it was handwritten on IATA ticket stock with the Delta stamp on it (not your normal cardboard travelocity ticket stock). My guess is that travelocity.co.uk contacted Delta and had a few words. I also contacted Delta to change my seating assignment (thereby leaving a trace of what could be construed as an acceptance of my "confirmed" booking status). Once CONFIRMED, ticketing must follow

So happy days once again. But beware, It seems consumers have little protection if the ball accidently falls in our favour.

He shoots, he scores.

OR IN ENGLAND
He moves, it must be cricket!