Lastminute.con, Ice Lolly and others

Anyone have any experience with them

I seem to type in my search criteria and get some bargain prices, then go to the check the price page and it can be more then doubled. £299 for Canada, but then when it came to the price on the calendar thing it was closer to £600. Finland £230 when it came to checking the price £530!

Icelolly also come up with great prices only when you phone to book it is for 5 sharing and if there is two of you it's double.

Anyone else find this frustrating!

Its quite simple - the usually tell you the price based on the number of people sharing the accommodation. I don't use any of these sites anymore, but tend to find the better bargains either with Igluski, Telextet Holidays, or www.catered-ski-chalets.com as well as the tour ops own websites.

Its a bit like Ryanair using the sites you mention - you can't commit without knowing the price, but its usually a lot higher than you initially hope for.

I know but if you type in a search for two people and the site comes up with a price it should be possible to book at that price

It is like going to Tescos buying a bag of sugar for example that has a price on it of £0.90 and being charge £1.50 because the price is based on buying 5 bags

To be fair to Icelolly it does not ask you for the number of people travelling but their site does not indicate what the price is based on

Bonfire wrote:I know but if you type in a search for two people and the site comes up with a price it should be possible to book at that price

It is like going to Tescos buying a bag of sugar for example that has a price on it of £0.90 and being charge £1.50 because the price is based on buying 5 bags

To be fair to Icelolly it does not ask you for the number of people travelling but their site does not indicate what the price is based on

I completely disagree. Mind you, I have been in sales and marketing for 20 years so I probably would.

Its called "Headline Pricing" - you show a price that attracts interest, and then add in all the other bits and pieces.

I found a holiday to Greece this week online on Teletext Holidays - £159 for 10 nights in Halkidiki, and I did a trip advisor review on the hotel which got excellent ratings, so phoned up to price the holiday (knowing that transfers and baggage allowance at least would be extra). Unfortunately, this package was based on using a Ryanair flight so they wanted £30 extra pp per bag, and there were no transfers as this was not a tour op chartered flight, so it meant a taxi transfer at £180 or hiring a car, thus more than doubling the initial price I had seen! I think thats a good example of how bad it can be when you initially see an advertised price, but i think you're statement that "it should be possible to book at that price" is incorrect as that is not in fact the actual cost of the holiday for what you need.

This is why if I am looking for a package, I find it best to use the tour ops as they include all this for you (mostly!) although there may be flight supps or fuel surcharges to add for instance.

Although I like putting my hols together and especially like road trips, skiing it tends to be package holidays and that is what I was looking for at Last minute

I have done sales in the past. If I told someone the price is £500 then asked them for £1000 I would have sold nothing and that is what last minute are doing.

I was booking a Thomson's package ski holiday on the internet once, and it went up by about £200 per person while I was in the middle of booking it! I went into our local office to complain about it, and they said that happens to them sometimes as well. It seems Head Office changes the prices and they can do that even when someone is in the middle of booking it. Mind you, prices can also come down like that, as well.

Quite a few times I have seen the advertised price, on Last Minute etc. and then tried to book it and found it had gone up. I always imagined it was because they had sold out of the ultra cheap offers. It's happened to me a couple of times with aeroplane tickets as well. I got seats one day and the next day they'd gone up by £250 each! It seems the ones I got were on special offer and once those ones were sold the price went back up to the standard price (for exactly the same quality of seat).

Ally

I am aware prices can or up or down, but they only went up when I checked them, do another search and they would be down again.

Bonfire wrote:I am aware prices can or up or down, but they only went up when I checked them, do another search and they would be down again.

Oh, sorry Bonfire, that's completely different! As you said, there must be something very wrong there. Have you tried contacting them to ask them about it?

Ally