Four Ways Flight and Travel Booking Sites Can Scam You
There are about 45,000 flights a day in the United States , all of which are filled with people heading out for adventure , leisure, or business. If you’ve been one of them recently, chances are you booked your tickets online , perhaps directly through an airline’s website. And once you bought those tickets, you probably relied on the airline’s website for up-to-date information about your flight, which means you should trust the information on the airline’s website and be confident that the airline is being honest with you about prices, availability, and everything else about the flight you want. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Here are some ways your airline’s website is tricking you.
Fake clients
If you’ve ever spent time on an airline or booking site, fiddling with dates, seat selections, and other tweaks, you’ve probably seen a little graph showing that X number of people are looking at those tickets. That means there are dozens (or more) of people sitting at their computers or phones, ready to hit the “BUY” button and steal those tickets right out from under your nose.
This is an example of “social proof,” a sales technique that uses our desire for social validation to nudge us toward a purchase. The sight of all those invisible strangers mulling over plane tickets makes it seem like the decision is reasonable and right—why else would so many other people be thinking about buying? But there’s no way to know whether dozens or hundreds of people are actually looking at those tickets, or whether it’s a randomly generated number or a vague approximation. Either way, it’s there just to nudge you into buying.
Deceptive deficit
Airlines and booking sites also trick you with misleading scarcity claims. If you’ve ever put together an itinerary and the site tells you there are only two seats left so you better hurry, you might reasonably assume that means there are only two sets left on the flight and you’ll be frantically looking for another flight unless you decide to buy the tickets immediately (often coupled with a timer counting down the minutes you can hold on to the tickets and think about them). Combined with the constant fluctuations in ticket prices due to changing aircraft capacity and demand, this can push you to hit the “BUY” button before you’ve thought it through.
But in reality, this wording often means that there are two seats left… at this price . This is certainly useful information, but missing the price aspect changes the stakes. There is a huge difference between paying a little more and not booking a ticket at all.
Check-in fee
You might think that if you want to check in for your flight in person at the airport or get a printed boarding pass instead of a code on your phone screen, it’s no big deal. But many budget airlines charge a fee for this, and it’s usually not listed on their websites. There’s also often a fee for checking in online and not doing it early enough, usually at least two hours before departure. Plus, these fees are usually hidden in FAQs and small print rather than prominently displayed, so don’t think you have any leeway.
Comfortable weather
It’s smart to keep track of flights as the day of departure approaches, right up until the moment you need to go to the airport. It’s better to know about a flight delay before you’re stuck at the airport for hours. But unexpected delays can have a negative impact on the rest of your travel plans, so if your flight is delayed and you have to spend extra money to rebook other destinations, you may be able to claim compensation. After all, it’s not your fault that the plane or crew weren’t there when they said they would be.
Oh, but then the airline’s website says the flight was delayed due to weather , and since weather is outside the airline’s control, you’re not entitled to any compensation. Weather delays are a very common excuse for airlines, but FAA data shows that weather delays only account for a little more than 1% of all flight delays, so the likelihood that an airline is using weather as an excuse to reject your compensation claim is actually quite high.