Eldar N.

The company https://www.cheapflightsfares.com/ is engaging in a bait-and-switch practice in the attempt to extort money from their would-be clients. It's likely that a significant number of people are falling pray to this.

Yesterday (3/27/24), I went on kayak.com to look for tickets to fly to Dallas on April 7th so my partner and I could watch the eclipse on April 8th. Due to the lateness of the reservations, fares were pretty expensive for reasonable departure times ($600 per person, one way from OAK to DAL - return tickets had already been purchased the night before). Cheaper fares were available for unreasonably long travel times (20+hrs). However, amongst these, one fare stood out: $722.16 for both of us, leaving early in the morning and arriving in the afternoon. It was a no-brainer, we thought. We clicked on the link, which took us to cheapflightsfares.com and we proceeded to enter our information and credit card information. At the end of this the system returned with a page that said "Congratulations! Your Flight booking has been confirmed." There were no disclaimers on the page. I have saved a screenshot of the page. Reasonably, this led me to believe that it was all done, so I went ahead and books a rental car and hotel.

This morning, I saw an email sent later in the evening yesterday, which said that I needed to call them because there were issues with my ticket fare. I called them and they said that the ticket fare was no longer valid, but I could get the same itinerary for $1023.14! I explained to them that the site had already told me that the booking was confirmed. They told me that it was not, and that they had not charged my card yet. While we were talking, I went on kayak and made the same search, which gave the same results as the previous day $722.16. I told them about this, and they said that it takes some time for the ticket to be updated on the site. I asked how long, and they said 24 hours. I told them that, given that all prices were already high the day before, it meant that the system hadn't updated yet the day before and it would now be about 48 hours that it hasn't updated. I told them it was evident that they were engaging in bait-and-switch practices, targeting vulnerable clients who feel that they've already sunk costs into the trip.

I spent a while on the phone with them explaining that this was bait-and-switch and that they were engaging in fraud. They argued that it was not so because they had not charged me yet. Finally, after an hour of back and forth, they issued me a ticket for the same price, but for a longer duration flight.

Given that the offer was still available today, I suspect that they are engaging in a practice of bait and switch, targeting vulnerable clients. I believe that if you investigated them, you could find many, many examples where they were successful at extorting money from other clients, perhaps clients how had greater urgency to travel, or clients who did not think they had a recourse. Regardless, I would like to bring your attention to what is likely an company that engages in bait-and-switch to extort money from their clients.