The BA app is (accidentally?) overcharging for World Traveller Plus to the US

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• Farid hagmil says:

  12 Mar12 March 09:12

  Well, this is probably not a quirk. This is the best way to maximise the revenue from each of their customers. Those who work in marketing will know…do an other test, look for prices using iPad/iPhone and compare with using windows. The price will be different as people using MacOS are on average more wealthy than those using other devices and therefore more can be squeezed out of them…this really is not a secret

  • Ali B says:

    12 Mar12 March 12:05

    And obviously this “research” must have shown that the average MacOS user is a simpleton?

    Your statement is the most ridiculous any of us will hear today. Dear lord!

• HV says:

  12 Mar12 March 09:25

  Rob, is this really new? I have, for years, always searched for flights first in economy and then looked at the prices of premium cabins. It was something I was told about ~5 years ago, along with the ‘delete your cookies and don’t log into exec club’ advice when booking cash tickets.
  BA have been doing ‘dynamic’ pricing for years – I can’t imagine this is anything but that!

  • Rob says:

    12 Mar12 March 09:44

    No idea. I prefer Dave’s comment on why it happens though – that the econony search causes WTP to be priced as an upsell at a fixed premium whilst a WTP search pulls up the official price.

    • David S says:

      12 Mar12 March 10:09

      Is this legal ? i.e. should someone less experienced than our readership expect that whatever mechanism he /she uses to search for a flight price gets the correct price ?

      • Ross Parker says:

        12 Mar12 March 10:23

        Which price do you consider to be “correct”, David – the higher or the lower one?

    • David Cohen says:

      12 Mar12 March 10:09

      If we start from the premise that this is most likely caused by a screw-up as opposed to intent/malice, this would seem to fit the facts at hand.

      They are both ‘official’ fares, they’re just priced differently and the BA app is probably coded badly.

      Essentially BA want more price points than there are letters in the alphabet.

• Chai says:

  12 Mar12 March 09:44

  It’s not just ny, same thing on yyz and others

• Jim says:

  12 Mar12 March 10:14

  When booked flights to Dubai in early January 2022 was charged more avios than expected. Was informed they had changed dates of Peak, it had been extended further into January, easy way to increase cost

  • Mikeact says:

    19 Mar19 March 16:11

    Never.

• Nicola Dodds says:

  12 Mar12 March 10:22

  Another glitch is I can never get the app (or the desktop) to give me the same price for a leg if I fly in one airport and out of another. Yet the call centre will happily give me the cheapest option when I ask.
  We often fly into Vegas but back from SFO. I search by doing a return journey NCL to LAS and write down the outgoing leg price. I then do a return search NCL to SFO and write down the homeward leg price. I can never get the same cheap price online but the call centre apply it for me.
  (I know most people already know adding the domestic flight makes the overall transatlantic booking cheaper)
  For example, last trip in 2019, we flew into Vegas business, but to fly home business from Vegas was over £1600 each just for the homeward leg.
  We switched to fly home from SFO and the return leg was only £700 each in First!
  Could not get that price to come up at all on the app or desktop by doing a multi city trip builder.

  • Lady London says:

    12 Mar12 March 11:32

    Yes if you’re returning from a different even nearby point the BA website seems to stick to the multistop itinerary pricing even when a human would take two mixable half-journeys priced more favourably.

• kitten says:

  12 Mar12 March 10:54

  So….@Callum….
  Do you believe me now that some websites detect the type of device you are using and charge you more?

  I think I mentioned at the time it came up that there were reports of this with iPhone as a particular one encountering this. I had no idea why except perhaps some sellers might view being trendy as more useful than having the best tech…. :-).

  • Callum says:

    12 Mar12 March 15:09

    Nope, can’t say I do. As I’m sure I said at the time, I’d need to see it actually demonstrated. This is completely different.

    I’ve literally asked for demonstration hundreds of times and never, ever received one. It seems bizarre no one can ever find it given it is apparently widespread!

  • Rhys says:

    12 Mar12 March 15:18

    To be honest, I’ve often tried the private browsing trick to and I’ve never really noticed a difference in price either vs using a logged in/cookies enabled window.

    I think this might just be one of those urban legends!

    • Alex Sm says:

      12 Mar12 March 20:48

      So true, Rhys, so true…

• Lady London says:

  12 Mar12 March 11:17

  A variant on this theme is:

  start off by clearing your cookies. (If Hertz sometimes a reboot may be needed after that to eliminate everything.)

  do your first search on any really well-known cheap site for what you’re looking for. For travel things I find kayak works well. Click on any on the results of that search (ideally the cheapest) to lay down some further tracking.

  Trying another cheap website as well might help too – I am researching this.

  Then search where you really want to buy. Start off with date(s) or restricted tickets (eg ensure search includes a Saturday night stay) you are sure will be cheap.

  Next search for departure date you want but select any return so it will be cheap.

  Then keep same departure date and modify search to your real date. If you know site will try to sell you up one class, do as in Rob example and search one class below.

  For a variety of different reasons I have found there’s times the site will keep cheaper pricing also for what you want if you haven’t searched for it first.

  Doesn’t, at all, just work with planes. Have had some good results recently.

• pigeon says:

  12 Mar12 March 12:16

  Yes, I’m pretty sure this is the DIF (=Dual Inventory Fare) issue raised above. It must work very well for revenue management, as they can piggy-back the WTP pricing onto the relatively sophisticated WT pricing. Of course, when there are no seats in T class, then DIF is essentially turned off and WTP pricing is independent of WT pricing.

  I think this is also the reason why Upgrade with Avios on the website doesn’t give the best cash price if upgrading into CW, because it has to check, for example, for O class (in WT), T class (in WTP) and then U class (in CW) availability and this is too hard for the system to do!

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