Agent rebuked for asking client who’d already bought ticket to pay extra

An online travel agent has been told to change the way it advertises prices on its site after a member of the public booked and paid for a flight and was then told the cost had gone up.

The complainant booked and paid for the flight on alternativeairlines.com but was then told the price was no longer available and an extra payment of £100 needed to be made to secure the booking.

Alternative Airlines, based in Horley, Surrey, told the Advertising Standards Authority the complainant made the booking at 08:46 on July 11 for a flight with Tianjin Airlines at a basic fare of £762.40, which was available for purchase at the time of the transaction.

However, when the Alternative Airlines customer service agent went to ticket the booking at 12:58, the fare had already expired as there was no more capacity available at the quoted price.

The company explained the reason for the delay on ticketing was that the customer service agent needed to manually check individual bookings as part of fraud checks.

The ticketing agent then re-quoted the flight and the basic fare was priced at £852.40.

The complainant, who received confirmation receipt upon purchasing the holiday but was subsequently told booking was no longer available at that price, complained the ad was misleading.

The company said a link on the payment page stated its terms and conditions, which made clear it acted as an agent and ‘on rare occasions carriers may fail to keep this availability updated in real time and in the event that capacity is no longer available at the quoted price they may cancel reservations before tickets have been issued’.

The ASA said the purchaser would expect the flight to remain available at the same price throughout the customer journey, including after they had paid for it. The link to the terms and conditions was not sufficient to override the overall impression that the flight was available at the price stated.

It said: "We told Alternative Airlines Ltd to ensure their price statements did not mislead by advertising prices that they could not supply with certainty to their customers after bookings had been made."

In another ruling, an advert by TravelHouseUK was found to be misleading after a customer checked the relevant airline’s own website and discovered the flight price was significantly higher than the £355 listed on travelhouse.co.uk.

The ASA said TravelHouseUK had not demonstrated the price was genuine and the ads did not make sufficiently clear that the prices were subject to change,

The company also did not make clear the ads referred to the price at the last update and did not indicate when that update took place or how consumers could find the most up-to-date price.