I have recently searched for a certain itinerary on Northwest, and found that Travelocity had better fares than Expedia, Orbitz, and NW. This was surprising to me. The fares varied day to day, but mostly were better. Anyone have other experiences with these?

Occassionally, Travelocity has "exclusive deals" that are indeed better than other sources. Other times, people have found out that those low fares are often unavailable when you actually try to book them.

From the Northwest website:

"Find a Northwest fare online for the same flight, itinerary and cabin that's at least $5 lower on the same day you purchase your nwa.com ticket, and we will refund the difference and give you an Electronic Credit Voucher for future travel in the amount of $50 USD for each eligible ticket."

Complete terms and conditions:

http://www.nwa.com/features/bestfare2.html

Flyboy -

I tried that. I bought tickets on NW, and filled out the form. But by the time they checked Travelocity fares, the fare had changed. I could not persuade them that I was right. Indeed, when I checked the fares, I could not get the lower Travelocity fare, even though I was able to do it several times in the prior week.

So I decided to keep the NW tickets at the higher fares because I didn't want to take a chance that the fares would be even higher or even not available. (Checking the seat availability, there were only a few seats left on one flight.)

I learned a lesson. If you find good airfares, take them. It wasn't worth the $50 coupon for future travel with NW.

Do you also double check the individual arilines websites? I have sometimes found cheaper fares there than on any of the main travel sites. i have noticed flyi.com for example has special deals on their web site that I may have missed otherwise.

I double, triple, and quadruple checked the NW travel site (and the main travel sites) daily over several days.

For this itinerary, I also multichecked Delta, which was the other possibility, but this particular NW itinerary was the best for my purposes.

When I worked for a major airline, customers would call and be all pissed off cause there was a very low rate on one of the on-line sites and then when they tried to purchase the ticket were told it was not longer there. These sites are not always current with the fares. People would then proceed to be nasty with us.