Help needed...Anyone ever use Lessno.com to book plane tickets to Europe
 

Good morning,

I was using Mobissimo to look for plane tickets for 3 to Paris (2 adults, 1 child).

Mobissimo brought back a really low fare on Lessno.com

Dates of travel are as follows:

Depart: Thursday, November 27, 2008 (Thanksgiving day)

Return: Friday, December 5, 2008.

I have checked all of the major US airlines (NW, DL, AA, UA, CO) along with Travelocity and Orbitz and all came back with a fare of $862/ticket.

Lessno.com has tickets for the same period (flying on NW) for $591.51/ticket or $564.00/ticket if we come back a day earlier.

Prior to last night I had never heard of Lessno.com, so I am a little leary of using them/providing them with a credit card number. Price seems to good to be true, but I haven't seen anything this low to Paris in quite a while.

Should I use them or just wait and see if ticket prices from other well known websites come down in the future?

Any advice is welcome.

Thanks in advance.

Mike

Anyone have any advice?

I receive email updates from Airfarewatchdog.com regularly.

They like the site very much and had a little article about it not long ago.

Thanks for the heads up...I looked at the website you mentioned, but they did not have much to say about Lessno.com

I was hoping someone on this board would have used them, or that some of the more experienced travelers would put in their "2 cents" with regards to whether the tickets should be purchased.

Thanks again,

Mike

I have no experience with them, but they are a relatively new company (2 yrs) that has done major publicity blitzes, so I would think they would not be messing things up yet. They've been mentioned in several travel articles, and they've formed some distribution deals with a few sites like Mobissimo.

I presume those fares includes taxes and all fees. You dont say where you are trying to get tickets from so it's hard to say if that's any good, but if it's about $250 less than standard airfares, it sounds good to me if it suits your schedule. I think that company is a consolidator and has negotiated some deals with airlines and often that means the routes or times are not the best (like leaving very early in the morning or long layovers). But if you like the routings and everything, I think it would be worth a try given how many places they've been mentioned in the press. I mean they aren't some company no one has heard of. I would try it if you can use a credit card and they give you the tickets immediately (or you can located your email reservation). I had dealings with a consolidator once who later went out of business and a lot of people lost money because they were taking your money and then not giving you the tickets until shortly before the flight. Basically, that is because they didn't have them and were operating on a float or something, and it eventually caught up with them. I didn't lose anything, but I would never deal with a company again that won't take credit cards and won't give you the tickets or your confirmation immediately.

Hi Christina,

Thanks for responding.

We will be flying roundtrip to Paris from Orlando, FL.

The website takes credit cards, issues electrnic tickets and indicates that they will send you a confirmation e-mail within 24 hours of purchase. Website noted that the tickets were on Northwest.

Also, the times the provided weren't that bad...

Depart Orlando at 10:55am and arrive in Paris at 7:20am the next day (with a 2:36 layover in Minneapolis)

Depart from Paris at 1:55pm and arrive in Orlando at 9:43pm (with a 2:45 layover in Detroit).

Hope that paints a better picture.

Thanks for responding...

Mike

I just ran a couple of quick "tests" of Lessno against fares I could find on ITA, and for the same travel dates (SEA-LHR on March 4/11 and LAX-CDG on April 4/11) ITA returned fares both lower and higher than those shown on Lessno. It also showed some flights as "nonstop" when in fact they're not nonstop, but maybe that's quibbling. I sure would be disappointed, however, to think I was buying a nonstop only to find myself changing planes in Chicago or some such.

I personally will not buy nonrefundable air tickets online where I can't see the booking class before purchase - don't know if they allow frequent flyer mileage accrual, what the change penalties are, etc., especially when I <i>can</i> find legitimate airline-based fares that are cheaper and which <i>do</i> allow me to see the T&amp;Cs. It feels too much like an auction where I'm in the one-down position. No thanks.

But people are different.

Thanks for the info Gardyloo.

While the actual booking class is not provided, you can look at the fare rules prior to purchasing.

I compared the rules on Lessno and the Northwest website as the tickets would be issued on NW and the rules appeared to be the same including the change/cancellation fees. Lessno also indicates that you can accumulate FF miles you just can't use them to upgrade (NW website says the same thing).

One difference that I did notice is that the Lessno.com fare had a child's discount for a child under 5 (75% of fare), while the NW website indicated that children were charged full fare.

$1,774.54 total on Lessno.com(taxes and fees included) seems much better than $2,586.54 (taxes and fees included) on Orbitz and NWA.com

Just a follow-up.

Took a chance and purchased through Lessno.com.

We will be traveling 11/27/08 - 12/4/08.

Purchased 3 r/t tickets on NW for $564 per ticket ($1693 total for all 3 tickets).

It appears all has gone well. My credit card was charged a little while ago and I looked on the Northwest website and they now have our ticket numbers.

Admittedly, I was a little worried when I began the process because I had never heard of them, but in the end I got a great deal on 3 r/t tickets to Paris.

Just to protect my investment, I will be going online tonight to purchase travel insurance.

Thanks again to all who replied.

hey, thanks for the report. I'm looking for cheap tickets and was thinking of using them, so it's good to know the NW people have all your info.

clemson - just wondering if everything still seems okay with lessno? Has anyone else had any more experiences???

We booked our tickets to Greece, may-June, w/ Lessno and have checked w/ KLM and indeed are booked w/ them. Great deal. We're happy.
We had a less than happy experience w/ Vayama last year, but Lessno seems just fine.

It's probably a little late, but I used Lessno.com for our tickets from LAX to Munich last December. We traveled on Christmas day and came back in January, and there were no incidents either way. They were great, and the tickets are generally cheaper on that site. Let's hope it stays that way!