Zacnlinc

I have a seat alert setup for AA 193 for today (Jan 17) that doesn't seem to be working.

ExpertFlyer Voice

We are not currently seeing any issues. The GDS was having problems with AA seat maps earlier today which may have been the cause. In the future if you email us directly you'll get a response from us faster and can look up your account. Here we can't advise you on your alerts when we don't know who you are.

Zacnlinc

Thank you!!

DragonSoul

EF virgin question here. Read the guides but want to see whether I understand this right...

Have a couple of flights coming up with the whole of the front plane currently marked as blocked. A few of the blocked seats have been booked. Would like to set up alerts for multiple seats in multiple rows for each flight.

Because I would like to receive notifications after the first seat alert, I assume I should set up an alert for each seat. So one alert for 23B, one for 24B, one for 23D etc. I think there would be about 12 seat alerts if done separately.

Therefore, I'd be looking at subscribing to premium for one month to get sufficient seat alerts (would canx after trip, and would re-subscribe for next trip later in year), otherwise it would be 4 seat alerts for 1-month Basic. Do I have this right?

Globaliser

I think that you can seat one seat alert for all 12 seats (assuming that Basic works in the same way as Premium on this). You will get an alert if any one of them comes free. That alert is then done, and ceases to count as a live alert. What you can then do is to go back and set a further alert for the remaining seats in which you're interested. Depending on exactly what you're trying to do, you might end up having to set fewer than 12 alerts in total over your pre-flight period, and it seems unlikely that you'd need more than four live alerts at any one time so you'd stay within the Basic account limit.

Moreover (but again, depending on exactly what you're trying to do), you may then only need to have one seat alert live at any one time, in which case I wonder whether even the Free option might work for you.

But if you do want 12 simultaneous live alerts, then a month of Premium does sound like the better option.

DragonSoul

Thanks Globaliser. Ding ding! Your post rang a bell! It's likely/possible the currently blocked seats will unblock around the same time (T-whatever) so certainly on the outbound I can just set up to four live alerts, as with the Basic plan. My thinking behind so many alerts at once is possibly not being available to set new alerts after the single notification, and for the return flight. Thanks!

BThumme

Not sure this is EF directly, but,

Looking at MEX-ORD. I see that EF mentions the fare saying travel must be nonstop. Simple. So why would the fare information say one transfer is permitted in each direction though, if travel must also be nonstop? Shouldn't the fare say no transfer permitted in either direction?

TWA884

Fare rules are best discussed in the respective airlines forums. The fare type or fare basis code is needed in order to provide you with an accurate answer.

TWA884
Travel Tools moderator

IMH

Since this post I've experimented quite a bit and stand by my report that EF doesn't play nicely with ad blockers. So unless users are prepared to jump through "are you a real person?" hoops they have to put up with this sort of thing:



Not classy, IMO. Are those ads really so lucrative that it's worth inflicting them on paying customers?

ExpertFlyer Voice

Yes it does, we know it does, we've tested it ourselves. Standard ad blockers like Ad blockPlus do not result in Captchas while using EF. Also you should look at the exact list of URLs being blocked by whatever ad blocker you are using.

It's very likely that you have another add-on that is blocking our cookies, which will result in Captchas. Again, since you need further help in using the correct ad blocker and not blocking non-ad parts of EF, please email us directly with the details of the add-on you are using.

As for the content of the ads, we do not control that other then the direction we have given the ad network for them to be travel related. Please send any screen shots of errant ads directly to [email protected] so we can forward to our ad network provider.

IMH

"We're right, our programming and testing are infallible, therefore our paying customer is doing something wrong."

Thank you for clarifiying your position.

FWIW, I suspect that few if any users would object to a small amount of travel-related advertising. But that isn't what we're being served (see example above).

ExpertFlyer Voice

As we said before, standard ad blockers work, we've used them ourselves. It seems that you are only interested in arguing instead of allowing us to help you fix your ad blocker and/or identify the browser add-in that is actually causing the issues, so we will not be replying further on this thread. You may reach us via email for help with your individual issue.

As we previously noted, the ad network was contacted and they fixed the issue on their end with the ad content.

IMH

For the sake of other thread subscribers, I agree that there's no point in pursuing the ad-blocker problem here. The question of inappropriate advertising is more important in any case -- I don't generally block ads served by sites I regard as 'friendly', such as EF, so if you can sort that the problem goes away. So far, though, it's not sorted.

This was a minute or so ago, i.e. after your last post:



Not related to any cookies previously stored by my browser, as I cleared the cache and restarted the browser before visiting EF. Not travel-related. So not "fixed".

Zorak

While I will agree that EF Voice's "bedside manner" in this forum and in e-mail support can come across as brusque, in this case you made a blanket statement about EF not playing nicely with ad blockers, which simply isn't true. I use ABP on Firefox on Linux, and Chrome on a Macbook and a Chromebook, as well as Opera browser for Android with built-in blocking, and have never been asked for a CAPTCHA by EF. You have yet to name your browser or add-ons, which would be a first step to trying to reproduce your issue.

Not saying this is what's going on in your case, but some types of malware can hijack banner ads and effectively substitute their own ads on top of what the site's ad platform originally served up.

Globaliser

If using Windows, one might try Blocking Unwanted Connections with a Hosts File. I think its primary function is to protect your browser, but it has the side effect of stopping most ads. When using it, I don't remember ever being asked for a CAPTCHA by EF; if it's happened, it's been so rare that I've forgotten.