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Sell by date is in an hour…. so let's increase the price.
Why...
On earth am I expected to pay more for something than advertised when it's about to expire? Even ticket touts at a concert or sports match lower the prices as the National Anthem plays to clear out the last of their stock. BUT...... Recently I was in Germany with three colleagues. Our meeting ended sooner than expected and we arrived four hours early at Dusseldorf Airport. Each had bought a return ticket from the UK and back for under £100 on Easyjet. We were all prepared to bin the return ticket as Easyjet had only one flight that night. However another large national carrier had an earlier flight. Despite having advertised the exact flight a few days earlier for similar prices to Easyjet, they now wanted £400 each one way! The argument being I suppose if it was such a late request standing at the airport we would pay the premium! Doh! Out of interest I asked how many tickets they had open… 20. Ten minutes before the plane left I went back to the ticket desk. "Now how many seats are still open on the plane"? "Still twenty, " the woman replied, questioning why I would bother to ask!! If my party had bought tickets at a sensible price they would have sold four more tickets, four more rounds of crappy sandwiches and several rounds of overpriced drinks. Instead that specific airline has pissed me off. I will try and avoid travelling with them ever again and put the experience in a blog. Anyone out there from the airline ticketing departments of a major carrier care to comment. Clue. Their old advert jingle was. ♫We take more fare/care of you, ♫ Fly the flag, fly the flag.
...and another thing
I recently travelled to Paris on the Eurostar (the undersea train service between St. Pancras and Paris). I was given a number of options and took a 12.25 PM out of St. Pancras and paid for that part of the ticket. All fine.
I booked the return which needed to be at the end of the next day. Both the 8.10 PM and 9.10 PM were the same price for the return leg at £106.50.
As I arrived at Gare du Nord the following day at 7.20 PM I asked the ticket office if the 8.10 was full. A pout of the lips, a shrug of the shoulders, a click on the computer screen.
“The computer say Le train n’est pas plein, the train is not full.”
“Can I please take this train rather than the one an hour and forty five minutes later?”
Another pout “The computer, he say this time ‘peut-etre, maybe.”
The customer service (hahahahahahaha) agent added I would have to pay a surcharge. Fair enough. Expecting maybe £20-30.
“How much?”
“£100.35.”
Just to change my journey by an hour for a ticket that cost only £106.50 anyway.
When I asked if he could explain how a rate 48 hours earlier for either train was identical yet now had nearly doubled, his helpful response was:
“Prochain client s’il vous plâit. Next customer please,”
100 minutes later after eating a slice of Pizza which had the consistency of a beer mat I was called to board the train. Teensy suggestion here Eurostar? When it’s dark how about lighting the carriage numbers on the display panel on the side of the train to prevent passengers trudging along 20 coach lengths in the wrong direction?
If I had any shares in Eurostar I would be tempted to sell them…… except I have a feeling the broker could never give a consistent price long enough to place a sell order…..
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One Comment
1: Full price flexible ticket = business traveller (occasionally demanding/impatient) who never knows when the meeting will end.
2: Discounted inflexible ticket = calm, relaxed leisure traveller
3: Buy discounted, try to use like full price = customer gets stuffed!