KLM Website Woes
 

I'm a fairly regular and generally satisfied passenger with KLM. Until today.

I need to fly from Glasgow to Rwanda in January 2012. I logged in to to KLM website and, as I knew, they had flights between the cities. A range of prices and flights were offered and I chose an outward and return flight.

As normal, we then went through the payment options but after submitting these a message appeared to the effect "we are sorry but somebody has bought this seat. We do have others available (at £300 more). If you would like to book this click"

I clicked and after a few more hoops was told 'sorry, all seats on the flight are sold".

Has anybody else had similar experiences? I am not sure about the legality of KLM's conduct. Its been a while since I taught consumer law but I suspect the law says you should not advertise fares for sale when they are not available. It may be just that the KLM web site is in one of its periodic mad moods, but I'd appreciate any advice what to do.

This has happened to me a lot with KLM, although I don't fly them frequently any more.

I don't know if this is illegal in the sense you imply or simply poor IT where once you have accepted the price that seat is not blocked for sale to you only at the price quoted.

I should mention the same thing has happened to me on Expedia

Behind the website is the reservations system. If two people on that system make the same entry they get identical results. Thus, if two people ask for London/Amsterdam on a given date and there is only one seat in (say) C class on KL123 they will both see 1 in the availability. If one of the users then books the seat and the other does nothing the one who does nothing will not see any change in their display unless they also try and book the seat at which point he will get "0 available" response.

Overlaid on that is point of sale availability (which is probably irrelevant but what the heck). In this case the system will consider where the request has come from and if they are two different agencies (or airline office) they may see different responses. For instance an agent with a deal may see availability in their "special" class while the other agent with no deal will either see 0 or even not see the class at all.

Overlaid on all that is the website. Now the mainframes that the actual reservations systems use don't take kindly to being hit with lots of requests from websites - after all anyone from about age 4 to age 120 who can wield a mouse can look up flight availability via websites. So the websites use chacheing which means storing responses to provide responses to "what's available" and using the stored response instead of going to the mainframe until someone actually says "I want to book" and, of course, the cached data can be wrong.

There's a part of the answer for you. Probably not all but it's a start.

Wonderfully helpful. Thank you Hartington. :ok:

Thanks very much.

I suspect it may have been a fault with their system. I tried half a dozen times with two different computers and the same thing happened each time.

Eventually I gave up and booked the same flights at the same price with Opodo!

Notwithstanding Hartington's explanation, as a regular user of the KLM website, I can say that it's not unusual to discover strange anomalies. My experience has been that once you've managed to convince them there's a problem (and that's an experience in itself) it can take weeks even months before its fixed.

I never book flights directly with the airline website, unless some other website has told me that it is the cheapest method. Usually Opodo or eBookers have the cheapest flights (so Kayak tells me) unless very occasionally it tells me that Lufthansa/Swiss have it cheaper.

For cheapest that sounds good. If you want to do a purchase and upgrade with FFMs, then you are stuck with the airlines and they ensure that the 'upgrade' requires a specific ticket class that cost more!

In the UK BA policy is that their website will always offer the cheapest fare irrespective of class on one of their flights. They seem to acheive it and it's probably about the way they don't pay commission to agencies who then have to add their own fees. I've no doubt some agencies match the BA website for price and occasionally you can get a better price from an agency but that's the policy so if Kayak don't consider airline websites you could be missing a trick if you want to travel on BA and you're based in the UK.

Why fly with BA? Who wants to swap planes in Heathrow? Nightmare!

the KLM booking engine is crazy, it often throws a strop or prices fluctuate wildly. I've found coming back a bit later tends to work most of the time, but you run the risk of the fares doubling.

I had to change my browser from Opera to Chrome before the KLM website would give me any prices and routings ....

If you're still planning on flying with KLM, try using the Delta website too. I often find on Delta.com there is different connection options, and many times the same flights operated under the Delta codeshare price to be cheaper than the same flights on the KLM website.

Looked at many fares on OPODO & often KLM keeps coming up as the cheapest. When you click to book it always comes up as sorry, that fare is no longer available-please reselect...this process repeats itself until it matches the same fare as another airline. So, no I have not booked anything with KLM, as this practice just makes me book with someone else.