Originally Posted by mannyo

What you are seeing is common practice amounst all airlines. Basically to start with the seats are cheap, then they get more expensive as the seats sell. But, as the flight time gets nearer if there are still lots of seats to sell then the prices start to drop again to drum up interest. There will always be people on flight that have paid less/more than you.

There really is not anything you can do, when you booked the seats you agreed with the T&C's which no dought mentioned that the price of seats can vary both up/down. You take a gamble when booking hoping that the prices will go up, however they sometimes go down.

Originally Posted by If Airlines Sold Paint

Customer: Hi. How much is your paint?

Clerk: Well, sir, that all depends on quite a lot of things.

Customer: Can you give me a guess? Is there an average price?

Clerk: Our lowest price is $12 a gallon, and we have 60 different prices up to $200 a gallon.

Customer: What's the difference in the paint?

Clerk: Oh, there isn't any difference; it's all the same paint.

Customer: Well, then I'd like some of that $12 paint.

Clerk: When do you intend to use the paint?

Customer: I want to paint tomorrow. It's my day off.

Clerk: Sir, the paint for tomorrow is the $200 paint.

Customer: When would I have to paint to get the $12 paint?

Clerk: You would have to start very late at night in about 3 weeks. But you will have to agree to start painting before Friday of that week and continue painting until at least Sunday.

Customer: You've got to be *&%#@* kidding!

Clerk: I'll check and see if we have any paint available.

Customer: You have shelves FULL of paint! I can see it!

Clerk: But it doesn't mean that we have paint available. We sell only certain number of gallons on any given weekend. Oh, and by the way, the price per gallon just went to $16. We don't have any more $12 paint.

Customer: The price went up as we were talking?

Clerk: Yes, sir. We change the prices and rules hundreds of times a day, and since you haven't actually walked out of the store with your paint yet, we just decided to change. I suggest you purchase your paint as soon as possible. How many gallons do you want?

Customer: Well, maybe five gallons. Make that six, so I'll have enough.

Clerk: Oh no, sir, you can't do that. If you buy paint and don't use it, there are penalties and possible confiscation of the paint you already have.

Customer: WHAT?

Clerk: We can sell enough paint to do your kitchen, bathroom, hall and north bedroom, but if you stop painting before you do the bedroom, you will lose your remaining gallons of paint.

Customer: What does it matter whether I use all the paint? I already paid you for it!

Clerk: We make plans based upon the idea that all our paint is used, every drop. If you don't, it causes us all sorts of problems.

Customer: This is crazy!! I suppose something terrible happens if I don't keep painting until after Saturday night!

Clerk: Oh yes! Every gallon you bought automatically becomes the $200 paint.

Customer: But what are all these, "Paint on sale from $10 a liter" signs?

Clerk: Well that's for our budget paint. It only comes in half-gallons. One $5 half-gallon will do half a room. The second half-gallon to complete the room is $20. None of the cans have labels, some are empty and there are no refunds, even on the empty cans.

Customer: To hell with this! I'll buy what I need somewhere else!

Clerk: I don't think so, sir. You may be able to buy paint for your bathroom and bedrooms, and your kitchen and dining room from someone else, but you won't be able to paint your connecting hall and stairway from anyone but us. And I should point out, sir, that if you paint in only one direction, it will be $300 a gallon.

Customer: I thought your most expensive paint was $200!

Clerk: That's if you paint around the room to the point at which you started. A hallway is different.

Customer: And if I buy $200 paint for the hall, but only paint in one direction, you'll confiscate the remaining paint.

Clerk: No, we'll charge you an extra use fee plus the difference on your next gallon of paint. But I believe you're getting it now, sir.

Customer: You're insane!

Clerk: Thanks for painting with Virgin.


And, added by a friend at British Airways:

Also if you don't turn up at the premises you are going to paint an hour before, the paint may be sold to another customer even though you have bought and paid for said paint.

Additionally, the paint that you think you have bought from the paint supplier may have also been sold to at least ten other painters on the hopeful premise that only one of you will turn up to collect it.

If your paint fails to work and really screws your life up then if you are lucky you might get a voucher for a new paint brush.

If you use a lot of paint, and pay top price for it, then you may gain special points that will allow you to paint something you don't want to paint, on a day you don't want to paint it. You certainly won't be able to paint any of the popular rooms unless you plan at least a year ahead, and even then you will have to do it at an inconvenient time.

Originally Posted by Nathanio

I am so incensed right now having just spent an hour and a half on the phone to them.

We have booked our flight for our honeymoon recently as the prices had started to sky rocket and so we'd thought we'd play safe and book.

We booked the flights and paid £651 return per person; which was more than we first started looking but still cheaper than the competition.

Today my fiance was looking at their website to see if they had gone up anymore and to our dismay they had dropped in price by £230!

Shocked we rang up and queried it and they basically said tough to her. Not having this and wanting to speak to someone myself it seems we can do nothing

I went through to a supervisor and asked why it had dropped so much and would they be able to refund the difference or recomopense us i.e upgrade or extra air miles. They point blankly refused to do anything to help us with those so I asked to cancel the tickets (so we could rebook) to which we were told we would only get the taxes back i.e. costs us £341 for not using the ticket

Basically we are over a barrell and can do nothing to get a refund or recompense for such a massive difference in price, they have dropped by 30% over the cost of our tickets and we can do nothing

We paid £651 each, today they are £420 economy or £647.50 if we went econ and came back premium.

Makes we feel sick and enraged that they can get away it and we don't have a leg to stand on by the looks of it

Anyone have any thoughts or ideas of what we could do?

Originally Posted by bengie

if you bought your car on a wednesday and they upped the spec or dropped the price on friday would you demand a refund or upgrade of the car you bought?

Originally Posted by Nathanio

What has really enraged me is that there is no sorry or apology or even token effort to appease me as a customer; they have basically told us to deal with it and to leave them alone.

Originally Posted by Emily-Elizabeth

Sperm donership: It is not like giving blood, it is tossing away...............

Originally Posted by Tomo1971

There is of course a very good chance that the remaining tickets go UP in price if the seats start getting scarce too early so you might end up winning after all??

Steve