V-Flyer

Having learnt about the ex-EU trick on here I have been pricing various options for DUB-LGW-MCO and back on Google Flights. The flight prices seemed amazing, almost too good to be true. And so it proved. Today I decided to actually phone Virgin and price up flights. I was looking at £482 for a Dublin flight in June and a LGW-MCO return in August but was pretty sceptical. I ran them through Google Flights just once more and it still showed the low price all the way through but then the bottom line was around £1,100.
The quoted price when I phoned Virgin was more than double, still a great saving on the direct flight but nowhere near what Google Flights had been quoting. The rep said that Virgin had approached Google to complain that they were showing non-existent prices. Just a heads-up for anyone using Google Flights.

Someone at VS doesn't understand how Google flights (and others including Expedia) works in that it uses the results of cached searches so that when the search was run the prices did exist.

I've been on Expedia where the initial search said £X but clicking through it was a higher £Y.

I've even had the same happen on VS and BA

Pinmac1 wrote:Having learnt about the ex-EU trick on here I have been pricing various options for DUB-LGW-MCO and back on Google Flights. The flight prices seemed amazing, almost too good to be true. And so it proved. Today I decided to actually phone Virgin and price up flights. I was looking at £482 for a Dublin flight in June and a LGW-MCO return in August but was pretty sceptical. I ran them through Google Flights just once more and it still showed the low price all the way through but then the bottom line was around £1,100.
The quoted price when I phoned Virgin was more than double, still a great saving on the direct flight but nowhere near what Google Flights had been quoting. The rep said that Virgin had approached Google to complain that they were showing non-existent prices. Just a heads-up for anyone using Google Flights.

Who was Google saying offered the price? Virgin Atlantic directly? Did it tell you to phone Virgin?

I'm not sure that the Virgin guy was wrong though. I have been running the same searches daily for 10 days or so with the same results give or take a few pounds. Earlier today, they were still showing the low prices on the list of flights I have saved but if you clicked in to the detail the price at the bottom was above £1,100. Now they are showing these higher prices even on the list and all the lower prices have vanished. Yes, Google Flights was saying to ring Virgin Atlantic to get the prices.

If its anything like the ita matrix, then you need to click through on the final ticket to make sure its still there. It's cached until that point.

That bit hasn't failed me yet.

Google flights to me is a browsing tool. If I want to get the full details of the flight, I go to the matrix, and take note of the flight number and fare codes.

Well google flights does give you the flight numbers along with options on booking channels

My most recent booking it gave me both BA and AA as options with the appropriate flight numbers for each.

But I agree you have to click right through the flight options to get the accurate price and not just look at the search results page.

That was my point though, that the low price being shown on the search results was also what was showing when I clicked through and it said to phone Virgin. This went on for days and it was only yesterday when I checked just before I phoned Virgin that the click-through resulted in a higher price than the search results and today the problem seems to be fixed and they are both the same. My saved flights are all showing +£500 increases and are almost equivalent to the full price now.

I'm slightly confused now, sorry if I have missed something!

So if Google Flights was showing the same price (once clicked through) as Virgin charged, how was it displaying the wrong price?

Before you click through Google Flights may show an 'old' price (even the Virgin Atlantic website did this until recently, it might even still do so!).