3 ms·
The new "basic economy" fares are the ones that piss me off. For ~16 months, I've been taking the same handful of United flights between the same locations eve
by caseysoftware 9y ago
The new "basic economy" fares are the ones that piss me off.
For ~16 months, I've been taking the same handful of United flights between the same locations every few weeks. When they launched "basic economy" they insisted that they would just lower the price for people who didn't care about having a carry on, assigned seats, etc.
Not surprisingly, the basic economy fare is what I was paying before and to get all the "perks" like having a carry on, assigned seating or even having the miles count towards status, it's an extra $20-30 each way.
They f*d us nicely there.
- BostonEnginerd 9y agoThis drives me nuts - not only is it more money, but it seems that most of the people with Economy-- tickets don't realize it and get into fights with the gate agents. It's amazing how effective it is for turning all of the people in the airport against each other.
- KozmoNau7 9y agoWe hit a nice little trap while booking our tickets for Christmas (Copenhagen to Stuttgart). The outgoing flight was Lufthansa "Economy Basic", which includes checked luggage. But the return flight was "Economy Light", which doesn't include checked luggage. Since we would actually like to take our bags home with us, it effectively added a hidden fee on top of the original price, just so it would show as "luggage included" in the aggregator.
- dx034 9y agoBut you surely saw that when you booked? Did you book over some shady website? Lufthansa.com would've definitely warned you before you booked.
- KozmoNau7 9y agoWe booked through Google Flights, which only pointed out that checked luggage may incur extra fees. We only spotted the difference on the return flight when we actually went to Lufthansa's site to check that everything was in order. Both flights were shown as "economy" on Google Flights.
- JshWright 9y agoYou can't book through Google Flights, it's just a search engine.
- KozmoNau7 9y agoEverything was handled though Google Flights, only the final payment page was Lufthansa. On that page, information about checked luggage was not available, only the ticket type in very small print. We had to manually look up what each different ticket type meant, and manually select additional luggage for the return flight, based on information we gleaned from a completely separate Google search. Trust me on this, I went through it only yesterday. Online flight booking is one huge dark pattern.
- JshWright 9y agoRight, so you booked the flights through Luftansa, not Google Flights. Google Flights helped you search for the flights you wanted, but then linked you to Luftansa's page to actually book them.
- KozmoNau7 9y agoGoogle Flights labeled the flights as simply "economy", strongly giving the impression that both flights were on the same class of ticket, instead of providing a very important detail, namely that the return ticket was a lower class. This is very important information when booking a flight, to give your customers the correct price, and they got it wrong.
- mrisoli 9y agoSame thing happened to Brazilian carriers in general. Law stated that every domestic flight fare within Brazil must include a 23kg checked bag, every international flight fare into and out of Brazil must include two(!!) 32kg checked bags. Then the law changed and no more checked bag minimums, people cheered and airline promised lower fares, lo and behold, no more checked bags at domestic and one 23kg piece at international flights, but the prices have only gone up.