To think this airline deliberately crashed their website

[petal2008]

Looking for flights for weekend away and found the ones we wanted. Had to check some information with DH and when went back on to book (about 30 mins later) they had gone up £150. Was a bit pissed off but they are the only times suitable so carried on with the booking process.

Got to the paying page and the site crashed saying "there is a problem, please wait". When it refreshed the bloody prices had gone up another £50!

Stabbed card details in with much venom. Grrr - robbing bastards.

Which airline was it?

Clear your cookies and start again!

The price went up because you looked at the page twice. The sites have cunning algorithms designed to push up prices where they can see you are seriously interested. The more you look, the more the prices will go up. To avoid that, you should do your research from an ipad or in "incognito" mode on your computer so that the airline webpage cannot recognise you when you actually go back to book.

..or, indeed, clear your cookies before booking

Google chrome secret browsing is also your friend here. They are scamming you.

I put the same details in on DS's laptop, he'd never even been on the site, and they were even more expensive! Think there must be someone sitting there upping the bloody prices every minute.

Wow, I didn't know that! Good advice. And sneaky airlines!!

hotels and holiday companies do it too.

Yes I've known airlines to do this, increase prices each time you check. FWIW, even coach companies like National Express and Megabus do it, it seems

I put the same details in on DS's laptop
Are you both using connections to your broadband? If so, you both have the same internet IP address and the airline's computer knows it's coming from the same place.
Either make your enquiry again from a different location, or use a mobile phone connection. (After clearing cookies as described above)

Lesson learned.

Is this really true How do you know? Is it heresay or a verified fact?

I assumed verified fact, but I haven't actually verified it myself iyswim!

I heard it from knowledgable techy types who aren't prone to hysteria or lying.

Good grief! Is this true???

Having googled it now, lots of people are saying it, and I haven't found anyone saying it doesn't happen. It's explained well here-

www.budgettravel.com/blog/fares-watch-out-for-slippery-airline-websites,9793/

I doubt airlines do this. It just wouldn't work; you check prices on two airlines, and choose the cheapest. Anyone going back and finding the fare higher would just book the other airline, or potentially not book. It's just not commercially sensible.

However, if you put a couple of seats in your basket, this could raise the price point of other seats without a purchase being completed. Say the seats in your basket aren't 'released' for 20 minutes (think of the outrage if the price went up while you were going through the check out process); if you started again, it looks to the airline booking system as though there are fewer available seats, pushing the price up to the next bracket.

Prices go up the more seats that are booked. At least on some airlines.

How do you clear cookies on an iPad? And what is google chrome secret browsing?

Braganza indeed I have done that on principle, booked with a different company because the airline I was about to book with suddenly 'upped' their price when I went back to look at it later the same day. I've also had the situation where they are in my basket, then I get an error message, so go back and the price has risen. If they are getting lots of hits, they see the demand is there, so figure they can charge more.

i watched a programme about this...the financial expert said that the "cunning algorithm" thing is urban myth.

apparantly on each flight there are a whole array of different costing seats. its not just business class and cattle class. within each class there are a number of tickets at (just for example) £50, £100, £150, £200 etc, and obviously the cheapest ones go first, and quickly. he didn't explain the ratios, but it may be that out of 200 seats, 20 are the cheapest and will probaly go to canny, regular flyers who know this and book them far in advance. just think, no matter how far in advance you are booking, there are probably people also booking far in advance and the law of averages means that they may also be wanting your flight and make the decision to buy on the spot.

They do indeed do this - easyjet/ba/monarch etc. The prices do fluctuate according to how many times you are on their page, how many peple are looking at it...

Ooh, I don't like the words "airline" and "crashed" in the same sentence but...... Cheeky buggers! This should be against the law. If it happened with our online shopping for groceries there'd be a massive boycott of the outlet but, they've got you because they're the ones with the plane and you're the one who wants to travel.