Holiday air fare rip-off

Travel agent charged older woman £116 more for ticket than young tech-savvy man

A BUDGET travel company tricked an elderly woman into paying £116 more for a flight than a younger man who had researched fares online, an investigation revealed.

Flight Centre added the hidden mark-up as part of staff tactics aimed at squeezing every last penny out of customers, it is claimed.

Staff also push up prices for air tickets by reserving cheap seats so only expensive ones are left to buy, and customers are told tickets are non-refundable when they are refundable, says Channel 4’s Dispatches programme.

Flight Centre is one of the world’s biggest travel agents, worth £250million a year in the UK alone, and claims it can find customers the cheapest deals.

However, Dispatches investigator Harry Wallop, 41, and his 81-year-old mother-in-law visited two separate Flight Centres on the same day and asked for a quote for the same flight, on the same date, to New York.

While Mr Wallop told his agent he had researched tickets online, his mother-inlaw Anne Sowerby told hers it was her first search. Mr Wallop was quoted £494, while Mrs Sowerby was quoted £610. Flight Centre claimed it was ‘one iso- lated example’ and not in keeping with the general behaviour of staff. Another undercover reporter sent to work at Flight Centre was encouraged to asses a customer’s budget and how much previous research they had done on prices. Based on this information staff were told to mark up their flights as much as possible, the programme claims.

The undercover reporter also filmed a saleswoman explaining how she had handled a cancellation: ‘My guy cancelled the other day as a “non-refundable flight”. It’s not. So I can make a hundred on it and still give him back money. So it looks even better for me because I’ve actually managed to get him money back on something that is “non- refundable”

Travel writer Simon Calder said the findings were ‘distressing’ and the techniques would ‘concern a lot of people.’

Flight Centre ‘strongly refutes the key allegations’ but said the programme ‘may highlight some isolated behaviour that is against our company policies and ethics’. It added in a statement: ‘We are taking this very seriously’.

Dispatches: The Truth about Cheap Flights is on Channel 4 at 8pm tonight.