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- iHaveNet.com: Travel
By Ed Perkins
"If I buy a ticket now, then later the fare drops, what can I do?" I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that, and I know I could make many, many dollars if I had a really good answer. You've all seen airfares go up and down like a yo-yo, and you understandably want to buy in at the bottom rather than the top. But the fact of the matter is that you can't tell, at any given time, whether current fares are at the bottom, the top, or somewhere in the middle. And once you buy, on most airlines you face a big fat penalty to change your ticket -- a penalty that is likely to be more than the price reduction on a new ticket.
Fortunately, a few online agencies offer at least partial "guarantees" against drops in fares. The latest comes from across the border. FlightNetwork, the big Canadian online travel agency (OTA), just announced "Price Drop Protection:" If you buy a ticket on that website, and the fare for that flight drops, you can notify FlightNetwork, which will then issue you a credit for the amount of the difference. Or at least some of the difference:
-- The best deal is for flights entirely within Canada -- The guarantee applies to the entire amount of the price difference.
-- On other flights, the guarantee is limited to $100 Canadian.
This guarantee does not involve an actual ticket change -- you still fly on your original ticket, at the original fare. FlightNetwork, not an airline, is absorbing the difference. The guarantee does not cost anything extra.
Although it's an attractive option, it's something less than a comprehensive guarantee.
-- You have to monitor the fares yourself and notify the program; it isn't automatic.
-- The guarantee applies only to the specific flight you booked, not to any other flights on the same route for the same day.
-- The refund you get is a credit toward a future flight, not cash.
The guarantee applies to any flight on any airline you book through FlightNetwork, an OTA with a fare search and booking system that looks very similar to what you find on
The three big U.S.-based OTAs all offer some sort of guarantee, but none is quite like this one:
--
--
Clearly, if you buy a ticket well in advance, the FlightNetwork and
Of course, you can always limit yourself to tickets on Southwest, which doesn't charge you to refund a ticket in exchange for future travel credit. And Frontier charges $50, which is less than any big line. Also, on a really expensive ticket, you can buy "cancel for any reason" trip insurance, but that surely isn't free.
Will the guarantee programs expand or get better? That depends on how much market traction the guarantees develop. Keep your eyes open.
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Travel | Buy a Ticket; Price Drops -- Can You Recoup?