Booking flights online

Booking Eurostar trains and onwards is no better. My sister and I went to Marseilles by train in January and prices and train availability constantly changed , even during a searching and booking session. I thought I had got everything sorted and all of a sudden, the price went up and one train was no longer available.

Why did I first read that post as Booking FIGHTS online.

I find some sites are a breeze, others have been a nightmare, so badly designed. In one recent case, I was very wary because of all the errors I found when I checked before payment, so I deleted the whole page and booked direct with the airline. To my astonishment, I even paid the same price as the "cheap deal" website

Yes I book with Ryanair and it is ok but you do have to be very very careful and it can be incredibly frustrating They change the layout very regularly and the cynic in me tells me they want to catch you out They also bombard you with pages you don’t need, hire cars,nhotels etc and you have to get past them without booking by mistake Their live chat often doesn’t work either They actually sign you in for things like insurance etc and you have to have your wits about you to make sure you opt out
I admit I have been in tears of frustration before now
I booked a flight for my daughter last year and when she looked at it a week later her Christian name initial had actually flipped onto the end of her name, so say her name was Donna Smith it had printed up as D Smithd I looked on site how to change it and was amazed that for the first 24 hours it was free to change but after that £115 I rang them and they said one letter wouldn’t make a difference but I tell you I was worried stiff until she actually got through and onto the plane

You do need to double check everything because dependant on the site you are using the data can clear if you update.
You certainly don't want to book a flight going to the wrong location on the wrong date to the wrong airport.
Always double check.

It definitely is a mine field out there booking or ordering anything online. Especially when you have to pay a large sum to rectify the error?

By the way, I do check carefully, but usually concentrate on dates, not the actual names. I'm a bit paranoid about turning up at the airport on the wrong day.

I've been booking tickets online with no problems, until recently. It was a rather complicated trip, involving 3 different airlines. Perhaps because I was tired, stressed or just careless, I managed to book OH's ticket with my first name for last flight! I think it was the computer trying to be clever, as our first names begin with same letter and are about same length - when I typed the first letter of his name, the computer "autocompleted" with mine, and I didn't notice. So the tickets were for "Mrs Florence Farmor" and "Mr Florence Farmor".

I only noticed the mistake when I went to check in the night before leaving for home. When I couldn't change it online I had to ring customer service. The only thing they could do was cancel his ticket and book a new one (at huge expense!) as type of ticket allowed for no changes or refunds.

I've since been on to airline, and as a goodwill gesture are giving some credit on frequent flyer programme, though not as much as I lost.

The moral is - check, check and recheck before clicking the final pay button

I check, double check and triple check when booking flights etc online.
Even so, Ryanair managed to trick me when booking two seats together - although I paid extra, their website would only let me book one then the other and in that few seconds of booking then going back, the second seat had gone

When I phoned the girl said she could sort it out - at twice the price!

I find this on rail ticket sites too, it is highly frustrating, some of them won't let you change anything you have previously put in without blanking out another box, and to be sure you have to go back and start from the beginning again. So it is not just you!

I think one of my worst moments was turning up with a car full of four tired, very sleepy children for an 11.30 pm ferry, only to be told on check-in 'but madame, this ferry left yesterday!'

Sometimes it is just the technology. Turned up for a film at a luxury cinema to find another couple sitting in our seats. We checked print outs and we both had the same seats allocated, on the same date. Seems he had cancelled two seats from his party, and the system had cancelled the wrong ones. He refused to budge, so we had to sit elsewhere, and I ended up bobbing up and down to avoid the metal rail round the circle edge!

To add insult to injury, after booking I receive offers of even cheaper flights. Have to cancel history so as not to be annoyed.

I fly with Ryanair every few weeks and always check before the final click to confirm, but never had any problems.

My DS1 is less careful. He has recently booked 2 flights for the wrong dates and had to change them. One was for a wedding in April, where, he discovered after the event, he had booked the outward flight to arrive the day after the wedding (!). (He managed to change that, not sure how much it cost him)

He didn't learn from that, though - while he was here in Germany a couple of weeks ago he had to get from Berlin to Brussels and had booked on Ryanair, only to discover on arrival at the airport that the date on his boarding pass was a week earlier! So he had to completely re-book at the airport. Cost a bomb, but he could put that on business expenses thank goodness.

So the answer, as others have said, is check, check, and check again. But you still shouldn't have to do it as often as you have said.

Long-haul and more complicated journeys I usually do through our travel agent, just to make sure everything is correct and to be able to pass the buck if anything goes wrong.

No its not just you mokryna it's never straight forward for me either. I end up shouting at the computer. Ryanair change things so often and its easy to miss something vital. I have no choice but to use that airline either. Computer seems to slip and I end up on a different page etc. None of this is due to my being a technophobe you understand.

I've booked a few flights online in the past and never had any trouble------Easy-Jet. Pay-up and job done.

Oh and don't forget the american dating system eg 06 03 2019

The problem is when filling in required information, dates, location etc for anything you have to be careful how you scroll/move down the page, because you can be moving down the list of dates, location, etc, instead of going down the page.

I recently booked cinema tickets for the other side of London by not noticing that I'd somehow jumped to the next one on the list.

You must check and check and check again that everything is correct before pressing that button. I’ve probably just been lucky but no mishaps so far and I’ve booked lots of flights.