Why are flights so much cheaper booked via a third party?

[MsGameandWatching]

Three flights to Seattle with Virgin booked through Lastminute.com are £1690.00. Three flights booked direct with Virgin are over £2300.00. I really don't understand . They're for June next year.

Well it's going to be that either that they were sold to them on a cheaper rate or they've chosen to get less profit then virgin.

this is why it pays to shop around once you have chosen your flight and also to consider one stops because there are often bargains to be had.

Consolidated fares. Brokers by a set of seats and resell them with their own t&cs

Does Last Minute give refunds minus any booking fee? I often book directly with certain airlines as their cancellation policy is a minimal cost.

Different fare conditions and less rights if things go tits up.

After losing shitloads when the ash cloud hit (including hundreds on hold to premium rate numbers from abroad to try to get home, which isn't covered by the insurance) as the airline wouldn't deal with me as I'd booked via a third party, and the third party was impossible to get through to due to the volume of people affected, ill only book direct now

I found out why when FIL suddenly got very sick and they thought he was dying. We needed to go back asap. If we would have booked direct than than would have been fine. Because we booked via a third party we had to pay a nice sum to get the tickets changed.

We booked a last minute trip to Florida this month and flew within 48 hours. We got hotel, flights and car for over £1300 less than just flights on Virgin. That way Virgin still get to sell seats at full price directly if people are willing to pay but they still put bums on seats doing IT tickets via agents (in our case we booked through netflights). We were able to use our miles to upgrade on the way out too, just had to pay £75 tax each.