Patrick, once a person clicks "purchase" or "Buy it", the computer puts a temporary hold on that seat until the purchase is completed. If they don't complete the purchase - either within a certain time frame or when the customer clicks away from the process-it goes back into "available".

Nothing tricky about it to a computer, and most airline and hotel web sites are set up to do this. Even Orbitz, with their "only 1 seat left" warning, holds the seat from when you start the financial process, not when you finish.

If AA had a glitch in their system, the agent should have just made it right without any drama.

Sorry Patrick, but your posts to Tracy do sound very condescending. What lcuy states makes a lot of since. Read #16 in the following link:

http://www.aa.com/aa/i18nForward.do?...horEvent=false

It states to contact AA Web Services. I would assume the reason they suggest this is so that it can be rectified without the drama.

Meant makes a lot of sense, not "since".

I will agree that each of my posts got more condescending as they progressed -- it was easy to do, when the person refused to listen or respond to what was being said, and even more so when the person said I was being on my high horse and called me pompous. Forgive me, but things like that tend to make me more condescending.

If you thought my original post at 7:08 on July 11 was condescending -- then I disagree with you. I considered it a polite explanation and comment. Maybe you disagree.

"People who feel they got ripped off do not listen when things are explained to them. This entire situation has clearly been explained now several times."

No, YOUR opinion has been explained several times and you are wrong. It's just COMMON SENSE as well as being ethical that if a price is quoted and said customer is in the process of purchasing at said price, that the price doesn't change during the purchase.

As far a blaming Tracy for "snippiness", you were not there so you can't judge. It is part of a customer service reps' job to deal with angry customers. The customer is angry with the company, not the individual CSR and the CSR should remain professional and not take it personally and get snippy unless a caller specifically targets the person, not the company, which Tracy didn't.

I apologize then corli33. I didn't realize it is only my "opinion" that the guarantee is for AFTER you put a reservation on hold or AFTER you purchase it. I didn't realize that it is FACT that the guarantee applies to their guaranteeing that no one can buy the ticket before you enter your information and click to purchase or hold it. Corli, since you say I've only offered an opinion, then I guess you're saying it is YOUR opinion that they should hold the ticket price even BEFORE you enter your information. How that is possible, I do not know, but perhaps you can explain it to me. I honestly thought I was FACTUALLY explaining the guarantee as it is written, but you feel it is only my opinion and the guarantee says something entirely different?

As for blaming her for snippiness -- again, read my responses. I merely offered a POSSIBLE reason the agent became snippy with her, but the fact remains that Tracy WAS telling the agent about a guarantee that has nothing to do with what she said it did. It is interesting however, corli, that you were apparently sitting next to Tracy when she made the call. I wish you had come forward early and told us you were with her at the time. You clearly feel (and rightfully so) that others have no right to say what Tracy did or did not say, yet you firmly state "unless a caller specifically targets the person, not the company, which Tracy didn't". I apologize. I had no idea that you could give us a factual first hand account of exactly what happened. Thanks for setting us straight.

I am sure many of you never bid on Ebay. If you did and seconds before the auction closes and you enter a price, no doubt you'd be raising holy hell if someone bought the item before you entered your information and clicked to bid. Clearly the seller should honor YOUR bid over the other one, because you had already decided you were going to bid on it.

Was this post condescending and snippy? I hope so. It was meant to be.

<<<I'm not very computer literate, but can you explain HOW an airline (or any other business) can put your purchase on hold so it can't be sold to someone else the minute you decide you want it, but BEFORE you have entered your personal information to buy it -- or put it on definite hold? Perhaps there is a way for that to happen, but I honestly can't imagine how.>>>

It's done all the time. If you select tickets on Ticketmaster, for example, it wil say something like "you have 2:00 minutes to complete your purchase" -- in that two minutes, noone else gets a shot at your seats, and the price is the price you were quoted.

This has happened to me, but on the phone with an agent. By the time all was said and done, the fare had changed. He simply asked me to wait on hold while a supervisor approved the original fare quoted, took about a minute. It's common sense, good customer service. It's not the customer's fault that seats ran out in the middle of booking...it's the airline's fault that they offered the same fare to too many customers. Their online booking system should be able to prevent this sort of thing, we are no longer in the computer-glitched 1980's.

Here is the fare guarantee from the AA website. It doesn't say anything about a "hold" and it doesn't leave room for much interpretation. The agents certainly should be knowledgeable about the guarantee:

Guaranteed Fares
When you make a telephone reservation with American Airlines or when you make a reservation via AA.com, the fare quoted will be guaranteed for 24 hours or until 11:59 p.m. Central Time the following day, whichever allows you more time. If you elect to make changes to the itinerary within this time-frame, the ticket price may change.

<i>lcuy on Jul 12, 09 at 02:44 PM
Patrick, once a person clicks "purchase" or "Buy it", the computer puts a temporary hold on that seat until the purchase is completed. If they don't complete the purchase - either within a certain time frame or when the customer clicks away from the process-it goes back into "available". </i>

Being technical here. I was just on AA.com as I have to get a last-minute ticket to fly out to West Coast. Anyway, the PURCHASE button only shows up ONCE, at the final step of the purchase process. Before all that, when one selects the flights, enters CC info and email address etc, at the bottom of each page, the button says CONTINUE.

Regarding the "2 minute warning" that Ticketmaster has, I've mostly seen those at ticket-purchasing websites. Usually, they say "We will hold these tickets for 15 minutes". However, I don't think I have seen this availalbe at any other AIRLINES' websites.

yk, I was responding to NP's supposition that it was an impossible task. Clearly, it's not, since all the ticket-purchasing websites do it.

"it's the airline's fault that they offered the same fare to too many customers"

Fair enough. Care to explain how they decide which customers are allowed to view the offered fares and which ones aren't? I guess you're saying that NO special fares should be advertised to the general public because that would be an example of offering the same fare to too many customers. HUH?

Yes, yk, that's been my experience too, but obviously I'm just an idiot who doesn't understand how these things work.

But what good would a guarantee be after you've already purchased the ticket? After 24 hours have passed are the almighty airlines allowed to go in and change the price of your ticket nowadays? It would make no sense to guarantee a price AFTER the item has been purchased and paid for.
Why anyone would find this guarantee confusing is beyond me. Bottom line the airline finally did the right thing by honoring their guarantee, but if they have this guarantee they should not be making people jump through hoops to get a ticket at the quoted fare.

I just spoke with Hawaiian airlines. There I was told the ticket is held once you click on it and begin the process. If there are 8-10 minutes of inactivity, you are knocked off that ticket. i wondered if you keep adding info, but very slowly, when you would be kicked off. He didn't know. You can also hold tickets for 2 days if you are a FF with them, but not if your flight is less than 14 days out.

I also called Continental's web site support. The agent there told me that everyone sees all tickets available at any moment. Once a customer hits "selects flight" and continues, it is held for a reasonable amount of time for the customer to complete the sale. He did not tell me what constitutes "reasonable", but it is locked in. He laughed and said there would be way too many unhappy people if they changed the prices while you were typing in your financial info.

Then I called AA.com web support. I was told you need to select the flight, type in your name, then choose "hold". Once they assign you a number it is guaranteed for 24 hours. If you click instead to purchase, they can change the ticket while you are typing in your details. He said you should "hold: instead of purchase if you are worried the flight will sell out.

I emailed both continental and AA with the same question. Will post when i get an answer.

Checked with CO and HAL because they are my airlines of choice. AA is one of my last choice airlines, right above Delta.

I agree that it would be nice for AA to have some sort of "system" which locks in a person's fare when the person has started the purchasing process. I also agree that I would be upset if when I finally got to the PURCHASE button to find out the fare has gone up.

However, this doesn't have anything to do with the "FARE Guarantee" issue that is being discussed here.

In fact, I just tried a dummy booking on AA.com. After I select the flights, the next page shows the itinerary AND the Fare Summary. Right below the Fare Summary, it says:

<u>Fares are not guaranteed until tickets are purchased</u>

Since one does NOT purchase the ticket until one hits the PURCHASE button at the very end of the process, the fare can go up or down in the meantime.

Again, I agree it would be nice if there is some sort of a "fare lock-in" feature for X minutes. But I guess the opposite could happen too. The fare could have gone DOWN while a person is busy typing in the passenger info and CC info. But if there is a potential fare lock-in feature, then one will NOT be able to take advantage of a lower fare if it becomes available during the few minutes of typing in information.

BTW, in OP's situation, now that I think more about it, there is a good chance that perhaps only ONE or TWO tickets <u>were available at that price</u> when she hit the PURCHASE button. However, since she's buying THREE tickets together, she is only given the choice of the next higher fare class.

This has happened to me before quite a few times. When I enter 1 person, a lower fare is available. When I enter 2 people, only a higher fare shows up. So, I ended up buying the tickets separately - 1 ticket at the cheaper fare and the other ticket at the higher fare.

So, I don't think in this situation, there happened to be 3 other people who bought the last sale tickets when the OP was entering her information. It was the issue of only 1 or 2 seats left at that price and the OP needed THREE.

Good point, yk, since the poster specifically said she was trying to buy three tickets. I'm not sure how the airline website would know that until she got to the end of the procedure, so clearly there could have only been one ticket at that price when she started the procedure. Nevertheless I'm sure there are those who will say it will make no difference. Even if the buyer wanted 150 tickets they will claim that the airline was guaranteeing them that they wouldn't sell any tickets at all until they had completed their "application". But yk, clearly we are the wrong ones here.

If you read my post above, Patrick, you are right regarding AA's policy. Not being nice about it, but you won your point.

Well, I did notice that one has to enter the # of passengers when one starts looking for flights/fares. So, there's a good possibility the OP DID enter 3 passengers and was quoted the lower fare; which became unavailable by the time she hit the PURCHASE button X minutes later.

I admit that I always look up fares and schedules using ONE passenger, even if I were buying multiple tickets. I only change it to the correct # of passengers when I am ready to do the actual purchase.

I said it before and I'll say it again, this rant is about nothing. The OP confuses availibility with hold guarantee.

The OP should find info and read about GDS, SABRE, how reservations work, and when the reservation actually becomes a reservation.

Only then the OP would know what a hold guarantee means.

OTOH, if the OP feels that AA did something really bad then walk with your wallet. That ought to teach them. They will never do that to you again.

Come on guys, this is not rocket science. It really doesn't require 60 convoluted responses and hypotheticals.

You log on.
You enter the cities.
You enter the dates. You enter the number of passengers.
You hit "go".

A fare quote for 3 tickets comes up, and this "fare quote" is what is guaranteed. It's clear, it's simple, and it's in black and white on the airline's customer service statement.

The airline honored this guarantee, finally.

Nobody would need a 24 hour guarantee AFTER the tickets had been purchased. They can't raise the fare later anyway. Not 24 hours later, not 24 months later. End of story.