BA and Price Comparison Sites
 

Just booked London - Istanbul on Expedia for GBP 120 less than on the BA website. Same day, same flight. The confirmation email is from BA internet Sales.

Thats 33% off.

My son booked from switzerland one leg only on the same flight from IST to LhR and also paid significantly less.

i guess I’m naive. I’ve always assumed booking direct was the lowest cost option.

A strange way to treat loyal customers. Is this caveat emptor or moral bankruptcy?

I would be interested to know if you can get a VAT receipt out of Expedia.

I saw their price promise. I also took a view on how likely it was I would get the voucher, how likely it was I’d be able to redeem it and how much I wanted to fly with them.

Whenever I think they can’t go any lower……

There is a possible issue when booking through price comparison sites - it can be hard to discover what is in the small print on refunds/changes etc

I've also discovered it much harder to get any redress if anything goes wrong - the attitude of the airlines is " you chose Booking .com - go to them"

Are you suggesting BA is any better?

Is there not a danger that if your flight goes 'pear-shaped', you will not be able to do anything useful unless you go through the third party with whom you originally booked and paid for your your ticket ... this losing time (especially if you're in a suitably-different time zone) and flexibility to chase what seats are available from the company you were due to fly with or their competitors?

The comparison sites can be a bit misleading regarding hold luggage and terms and conditions. Often they try and upsell with flexibility and enhanced customer contact options. I have heard these are allegedly not always easy to use. Certainly one of the got you’s with almost any flexible ticket is that the airlines are somewhat opaque with fare classes and when you rebook the cheapest available fare class ends up costing significantly more.

A member of my extended family bought through an online third party. She did not clock that it was a 'no checked baggage' ticket and had to pay at the terminal.

The choices for baggage were exactly as the BA website. The confirmation was from ‘BA internet sales’.

In my experience (with tickets bought from BA) if things go wrong they are totally inflexible. And they will jump through any hoop to avoid paying compensation to which you are legally entitled.