"What's up With These Crazy DING! Fares? See for yourself...."
Aug 12, 2010, 9:32 am
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2010
Posts: 403
"What's up With These Crazy DING! Fares? See for yourself...."
Oakland to San Antonio for $99 One-Way!
- Fare is valid for travel Monday-Saturday, September 1 through September 30, 2010 only
San Francisco to Tucson for $99 One-Way!
- Fare is valid for travel Monday-Thursday and Saturday, September 1 through September 30, 2010 only
======================
Wow, that IS crazy! I not only happened to need to go to Tucson between Mon-Thurs and Sat in September, but $99???? Geez, it's like $100 one way everywhere else, it's a good thing I didn't miss this offer!!!!
No, not interested in it, and it was a waste of 5 seconds of my time opening this window. It's starting to question our intelligence here, and Southwest should think about not even sending them out if these are the deals.
- Fare is valid for travel Monday-Saturday, September 1 through September 30, 2010 only
San Francisco to Tucson for $99 One-Way!
- Fare is valid for travel Monday-Thursday and Saturday, September 1 through September 30, 2010 only
======================
Wow, that IS crazy! I not only happened to need to go to Tucson between Mon-Thurs and Sat in September, but $99???? Geez, it's like $100 one way everywhere else, it's a good thing I didn't miss this offer!!!!
No, not interested in it, and it was a waste of 5 seconds of my time opening this window. It's starting to question our intelligence here, and Southwest should think about not even sending them out if these are the deals.
Aug 12, 2010, 10:22 am
#2
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: SJC and ONT
Programs: WN A-List/CP, HHonors Diamond, CX J with AA miles, US Gold/*G
Posts: 2,082
Aug 12, 2010, 10:55 am
#3
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2010
Posts: 403
See here's the thing. Since the nature of Ding! is to provide only a few "deals", they need to be good enough to entice folks to think, "Well, I had no need to go to Tuscon, but for $59? Why not." They can't possibly be getting much adoption when they pick a couple of random cities for fares that I suppose are "OK" but no one is going to jump over tables trying to grab a $99 one way fare to San Antonio.
I would think though that they are tracking how many Ding! fares are purchased, and I suppose the volume is good enough to continue with this program, so maybe the bay area is just a poor market right now.
But gosh, I used to be a Ding! fanatic, now it's just dumb.
I would think though that they are tracking how many Ding! fares are purchased, and I suppose the volume is good enough to continue with this program, so maybe the bay area is just a poor market right now.
But gosh, I used to be a Ding! fanatic, now it's just dumb.
Aug 12, 2010, 11:01 am
#4
Join Date: Nov 2006
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Aug 12, 2010, 2:32 pm
#5
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Central Florida
Programs: MR PL, Hyatt GP Diamond, HH Gold, UA Silver, WN A-LIst, National EE
Posts: 881
It's possible that it is time to uninstall DING! I looked at my offers for today - admittedly with a tainted point of view after reading some of the responses in this thread. One of the "deals" was MCO-AUS for $83. Now, I have looked at MCO-AUS recently, and this wasn't a bad fare - if they had the $83 available for days I wanted. They didn't. So, I played around with the dates and found something interesting. For an outbound flight on 9/27, the DING! fare was available for $83, but there was also a Wanna Get Away fare available for $81.
DING! Fail.
DING! Fail.
Aug 13, 2010, 8:41 am
#6
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Redlands, CA
Programs: AS, AA, WN
Posts: 974
I never put Ding back on my laptop after I recently reformatted it. Ding is great when there is a cheap (~ $39) PHX-LAS or PHX-SAN fare. It's close enough to home that I might just jump on something like that when I want a weekend away.
But like stevekoe, I booked a RT flight to LAS back in May for a wedding in June and the WGA fares were $4 less each way than the Ding fares! ($55 vs $59). So that, combined with the fact the most common destination on Ding from PHX these days seemed to be ELP...a city no one wants to go to unless they have family or friends there...made the program essentially worthless to me.
But like stevekoe, I booked a RT flight to LAS back in May for a wedding in June and the WGA fares were $4 less each way than the Ding fares! ($55 vs $59). So that, combined with the fact the most common destination on Ding from PHX these days seemed to be ELP...a city no one wants to go to unless they have family or friends there...made the program essentially worthless to me.
Aug 13, 2010, 8:43 am
#7
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Join Date: Jul 2002
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I agree on the overall suckitude of Ding, but I still dutifully click it every time a new one shows up.
Most of the fares are laughable. But about once every 2 months or so, I'll get one of my regular Southwest routes on Ding and book 3 or 4 segments. All of my September MCI-DAL segments are $62 Dings. (Of course, $62 to DAL isn't really a screaming good deal, but the regular fare these days has been high - $79 to $88 one-way, plus taxes.)
I also booked an MCI-MDW Ding a few weeks back...$49 like it should be.
I keep hoping that once we move into fall some better fares will return.
Most of the fares are laughable. But about once every 2 months or so, I'll get one of my regular Southwest routes on Ding and book 3 or 4 segments. All of my September MCI-DAL segments are $62 Dings. (Of course, $62 to DAL isn't really a screaming good deal, but the regular fare these days has been high - $79 to $88 one-way, plus taxes.)
I also booked an MCI-MDW Ding a few weeks back...$49 like it should be.
I keep hoping that once we move into fall some better fares will return.
Aug 13, 2010, 8:54 am
#8
Join Date: May 2006
Location: TUS/PDX
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Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A293 Safari/6531.22.7)
Where is this "Tuscon" you speak of? 
Originally Posted by braddqq
See here's the thing. Since the nature of Ding! is to provide only a few "deals", they need to be good enough to entice folks to think, "Well, I had no need to go to Tuscon, but for $59? Why not." They can't possibly be getting much adoption when they pick a couple of random cities for fares that I suppose are "OK" but no one is going to jump over tables trying to grab a $99 one way fare to San Antonio.
I would think though that they are tracking how many Ding! fares are purchased, and I suppose the volume is good enough to continue with this program, so maybe the bay area is just a poor market right now.
But gosh, I used to be a Ding! fanatic, now it's just dumb.
I would think though that they are tracking how many Ding! fares are purchased, and I suppose the volume is good enough to continue with this program, so maybe the bay area is just a poor market right now.
But gosh, I used to be a Ding! fanatic, now it's just dumb.
Aug 13, 2010, 9:43 am
#9
Moderator: Southwest Airlines, Capital One
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Aug 14, 2010, 11:25 am
#12
Join Date: Apr 2006
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Posts: 85
brad, we are not sdrawkcab in az. that is just your imagination. Now as to why anyone would want to go to Tucson, I certainly raise that issue (being a Sun Devil).
Last edited by azgrunge; Aug 14, 2010 at 12:34 pm