In September we are taking a trip to Bend, Oregon for my cousin Michael's wedding. We were going to purchase plane tickets back in March but, after talking to the fine folks at AAA Auto Club they recommended that we wait until after Memorial day when prices typically drop.
We had not been able to find tickets less than $340+ for roundtrip from Madison/Milwaukee/Chicago to Portland/Bend/Redmond back in March so, we waited. Sure enough I started looking yesterday and tickets for the same airlines and locations were running about $280+. Good deal, I thought.
I used a fare aggregator called kayak (www.kayak.com) and was pleasantly surprised by the breadth of the search. After a run-in with cheaptickets.com that where the flight at the advertised price was no longer available I chose to go with Orbitz.com. In a hurry to pick-up my wife and get to our evening plans I hastily filled out all of the required information and purchased the tickets.
After arriving home I checked my email and found my confirmation. 4 Tickets, Going through each of our names check, check, check, Waitaminnit??? For some unexplained reason I entered my wife's maiden name. Orbitz customer service made it quite clear that changing the name was not an option, FAA rules and all. The only option available was to cancel the tickets and re-purchase.
No problem, tickets cancelled and flights brought up again, purchase four tickets on same flight ... "We're sorry the price is no longer available." ARGH!!!! *cue Peanuts theme*
Now, I all the same flights are listed at the same price but actually cost $340+.
Back to kayak.com and start from scratch. Flights from Milwaukee to Portland:
"The cheapest option did not exactly match your search criteria. Would you like to include this result in your search?"
$140 from O'Hare to Portland, direct flight. 4 tickets purchased and $500+ dollars saved.
Yay.
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