eDreams Jacked up the price of online airticket sale just befoe the checkou Unitied Kingdom

Today, December 18, I set out to purchase on airline tickets from a U.K. based airline travel online firm going by the romantic handle of eDreams. This was on the recommendation of my English sister-in-law who alerted my wife and I to a bargain RT fare of  just 98 pounds for each of us (my wife and I) for our planned round trip in May, 2014: flying from Gatwick, London to Venice. This was supposedly on British Airways (a graet airline I know).

So I went to the eDreams website and all seemed to go well, with the reservations appearing as expected (some 98 British pounds for the RT fare and with the carrrier indeed British Airways). Then, as I concluded the process and was about to use my credit card to checkout (I had selected the credit card type and entered my number - but had not yet hit checkout) an alert flashed on at the top of the screen. I was informed that the price from the airline had gone up by some forty pounds for each fare and with the recalculation - and now unexpected service fees in addition- the total for each of us came to 164 British pounds per fare. So, in the last stages of the process our fares soared, alledgedly owing to an unlucky airline price increase.

As I absorbed this, I made the abrupt decisionto bale out of the website and not proceed to checkout. I then went straight away to the British Airlines official website and very expeditiously reserved the same flight times and same carrier for almost exactly the original price expected. So we paid British Airlines jsut over two hundred pounds for the same tickets that eDreams claimed had soared in price some twenty minutes earlier.

This is my second experience with booking European travel through an on-lone agent (bundler) where the price was unexpectedly increased during the online transaction and just prior to finalized. The earlier experience was for rail travel in Spain. In  that case I had checked out, but I demanded they undo the ticket sale and they eventually complied. I went directly to the rail carrier in that case and purchased tickets for even lower than the first price originally quoted. Lesson here, when booking European travel (any travel) online go directly to the carrier or deal with an agency that has a sterling reputation. I am sure there are reputable agencies but it seems a case of "surfer beware" as there are sharks in the waters.

I have since received and emaill for eDreams urging me to fininish my booking and also claiming they were holding seats for us. Fortunately the sales follow up site has a unsubscribe link, so I have dropped out of their radar. I  hope. My wife and I are in our mid seventies and on limited incomes so this is a lesson I think in the perils of shopping for travel online.