It's not an unreasonable question.
Jan. 24th, 2002 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioSoon I ought to actually buy my plane ticket for Galacticon in late March, now that some other travel details have sorted themselves out. A while back, when I was doing the feasiblity study, I found prices in the $220 range, as I recall. When I repeated the search today, the lowest offers were $272. Oops.
So I checked out Priceline and HotWire. I've never used either before, but both were recommended by coworkers. They both offer to sell you cheap tickets but won't tell you the travel times until after you buy. Cheap, in this case, is around $170, a $100 savings. But their parameters for travel times are "depart sometime between 6am and 10pm". As I'm going down on a Friday, this is clearly unacceptable. And I'm not exactly the only Shabbat-observant person who ever takes weekend trips, so I figured it was worth investigating the options.
I sent both of them email asking if it is possible to restrict the range further (for a higher price, of course). I don't need to name my times, really; I just need to name reasonable boundaries. There are an awful lot of departures between 6am and, say, 1pm, and maybe that's still an improvement over sticker price and precise times.
To their credit, both responded to the email within 15 minutes. Unfortunately, they don't have this option.
I guess I'll wait another few days and see which direction prices seem to be going.
So I checked out Priceline and HotWire. I've never used either before, but both were recommended by coworkers. They both offer to sell you cheap tickets but won't tell you the travel times until after you buy. Cheap, in this case, is around $170, a $100 savings. But their parameters for travel times are "depart sometime between 6am and 10pm". As I'm going down on a Friday, this is clearly unacceptable. And I'm not exactly the only Shabbat-observant person who ever takes weekend trips, so I figured it was worth investigating the options.
I sent both of them email asking if it is possible to restrict the range further (for a higher price, of course). I don't need to name my times, really; I just need to name reasonable boundaries. There are an awful lot of departures between 6am and, say, 1pm, and maybe that's still an improvement over sticker price and precise times.
To their credit, both responded to the email within 15 minutes. Unfortunately, they don't have this option.
I guess I'll wait another few days and see which direction prices seem to be going.
