Cheapflights guilty of misleading customers
The Advertising Standards Agency has slammed the popular website Cheapflights.co.uk for misleading customers with phoney prices advertised to lead customers into the site.
The ASA watchdog found that many fares were either not available at the time they were shown on the site or extremely limited when it examined the site in September 2011.
Cheapflights hit back by saying that it is an online advertising platform rather than a travel agent that deals with the public. The website publishes the ‘best deals’ found on other websites and takes a referral fee when users make a booking. It said that advertisers were responsible for posting valid correct fares.
The website’s investigation was instigated when a customer made a complaint to the ASA about a flight from London to Columbia which was advertised at prices from £474 to £626 – but those prices were not available when he planned to book. However, flights are time-sensitive and Cheapflights insisted most deals were ‘subject to availability’.
Cheapflights has a policy of excluding advertisers who continually misadvertise flight prices with a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ system.
The ASA concluded that Cheapflights that it wasn’t not enough to instruct customers to ‘check with the advertiser at the time of booking’ and its advertisers were responsible for telling customers when there was limited capacity for deals.
By Dan Thorne · January 4th, 2012 at 11:11 am
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Comments
4 Jan 12
2:29 pm
Actually being a media company we do not sell to “customers” as we publish prices supplied by the travel industry who are our actual customers. However we have been working since being notified of the complaint by the ASA with tem to try to ensure that the wording previously agreed with the ASA is updated to reflect the potential for the Date Range deals complained about to sell out on popular dates rapidly whilst still being available on other dates during the advertised date range. our response statement is as follows
4th Jan 2012
Cheapflights would like to make a statement with regards a Notification we received from the ASA on 30th November 2011 concerning a single complaint concerning availability of prices for advertisements by Travel Up Ltd t/a Bargain Flight Desk; Polani Travel Ltd t/a ComeFli; Sea Breeze Holidays t/a FlightHouseUK.com for flights prices to Bogota and Cali on 21st and 22nd September 2011. This has resulted in a complaint by a member of the public to the ASA being upheld on 4th January
Statement points:
• The prices under scrutiny were obtained by the advertisers under Air Line Contracts which supply “date Range” fares which are open for a specific period subject to availability on dates within that date range. Text above the listed ads stated “Prices updated DAILY and are subject to availability. Check with the advertiser at the time of booking”.
• Cheapflights Media has been a consumer flight price “champion” since 1996 and has always co-operated closely with both the ASA and the OFT to improve the online advertising environment for consumers.
• Our UK site gets up to 3 million visits a month and we regret that this incident has occurred particularly since the wording used about availability on deals at the time of the complaint had previously been implemented following correspondence with the ASA earlier last year .
• As a result of this complaint we have again been consulting with the ASA and have taken appropriate action to improve messaging about the prices published by our advertisers on our site. We have also reminded our advertisers about the need to ensure that their deal prices and availability are accurate and updated regularly and that their own sites’ wording meets ASA standards.
• The quality of our deals is very important to us and we believe we have genuinely cheap deals. We are always looking for ways to improve our service and make the hard to find deals easier to locate. Unfortunately it is the nature of our industry that the best flight deals can be very limited in availability and in some cases sell out.
• It was unfortunate that the consumer did not contact us directly for help, as by the time we heard of this through the ASA it was not possible to investigate properly or help the consumer. We welcome feedback on the accuracy of our deals and work swiftly to give feedback. We have a three strikes and off-the-site policy for any advertisers who display inaccurate fares.
4 Jan 12
2:32 pm
Thank you for the clarification John.
4 Jan 12
3:28 pm
I work for a travel company and we use many sites for comparing and booking flights. Recently we had a customer enquiring about a holiday to the far east in Nov and Dec. I explained to the customer that for the dates provided we could not get flight prices, as airlines only release fares 330 days in advance.
He came back to me however with prices from Cheapflights which were both unrealisticly low and could not be valid due to the dates. In my years of dealing with flights I had never come across such low flight costs during the high season to the far east (below £400 – you cannot get flights this low any time of year!!) and I explained to the customer these prices were in fact not real. How do you explain that Cheapflights?
4 Jan 12
4:30 pm
I’d like to make the additional comment that there were unusually 4 travel companies named in 4 separate ASA findings supporting complaints about deals last year – so it was not just Cheapflights in the frame.
However re Richard Ellis’s comment I would be very happy to respond to him if he is able to provide specific dates/routes/and times for the prices he is saying are unrealistic. Responding to the general statements he has made (as he will know as he works for a travel business) would be difficult to comment usefully on without those details. Also if advertisers using our site are in fact offering unrealistic prices we need to know their names and to check them out. We take the accuracy of prices given to us by our advertisers very seriously and if an advertiser does not provide them consistently then we operate a three-strikes-and-you-are out policy. Happy to take this up Richard via email on corporate-pr@cheapflights.com
13 Jan 12
2:06 pm
Over the last 15 years, I don’t think I have ever found an ‘advertised fare’ with any agent (retail, trade, online). I assume the ASA will go after these next.
-maybe encourage agents to stop advertising fares ‘from’….or tell us what days the ‘from’ is from. would be a lot simpler.
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