To think this is sharp practice from coach companies

Bizarrely I had the opposite happen to me this week. I had booked a return train journey on Trainline and had requested the Quiet Coach B. The journey is 6 weeks away so I was very surprised when the confirmation came back allocating me a different coach on both trains. I phoned straight away and they were apologetic, cancelled the tickets and rebooked seats on Coach B. The new fare was £12 less!

The last two posters are correct. We bitterly regret paying over the odds and won't get caught like that again.We are going to write to the coach company expressing our disapproval of this policy.Hopefully it might make them think.

There's a local coach company near me that offers mainly breaks of a week or less and it uses variable pricing. The company has been around for decades and is very popular, especially with older people, so it must work. The downside is that the company will cancel a break if the numbers are too low. Personally I wouldn't choose a break where the brochure price was not the price I would pay.

You had the choice not to book the trip on those new terms. The fact that you accepted it proves to the company that they can get away with it. You should have told them that, if they have any spaces left towards the end date, then to call you with a better offer! It's your business that keeps them going so you have to be canny about getting the deal you want. I never paid more for the advertised price for anything.

Brittany Ferries do this dynamic pricing. If you book very quickly you get cheap fates/cabins. As it gets closer to destination date they increase prices but then a few days before sailing they sell off any spare spaces but by then there ate no cabins left. Trick is to book early and pay deposit then if you Nerf to change dates it is ok and no admin charge.

The point I meant to make was that it is a question of using experience and recommendations to catch the right time to book at the cheapest price.

It has always been that the optimum time pricewise for booking a Ryanair flight is 6 weeks in advance.

For my next visit I was trying to persuade my husband to come with me, and lost a week, so now I am having to pay more than the original price of €12.99 each way. The flight out is now €9.99 and the return flight is €40.99!

I shall be staying a little longer and, for the first time in a long time, will be checking in baggage. They have raised the baggage allowance from 15 kg to 20 kg.

Hotel chains use the same pricing system. Last year I was about to book a room at a Premier Inn for one night prior to travelling to France with Euro Tunnel.
The phone went and by the time I came back to the booking and clicked reserve the price had gone up by £10 all in the space of 5 mins!
A lot of sites also show (allegedly) how many are viewing an item/room/flight thereby adding pressure to buy quickly without shopping around.
Trying to be a savvy shopper isn't easy!

Very annoyingly, one of our local theatres have taken to this sort of pricing as well.

The budget airlines have reduced the size of the cabin luggage they will now allow - not by a great deal but enough to make your case/ bag too big. The weight is less too.
Just to warn anyone planning a trip to check sizes in time.

We usually go to San Francisco every November to visit our youngest son for Thanksgiving and looked up the price for the holiday,we stay in a hotel while we are there, at the beginning of January and the cost was £4000 each! we decided not to book then and looked at going at a different time as it was much cheaper,£2000 each,but still didn’t book as we prefer to go at Thanksgiving as we can then meet up with members of his wife’s extended family ?, we looked again last Monday evening and the price had changed to £1338 each to go for Thanksgiving so we booked it there and then ? we would have been very annoyed had we paid the £4000 each we had been first quoted ?

I don’t know if they still do, it EasyJet used to employ dynamic pricing

Bloody rip-off

This happened to me a few years back. I was told that it was the price when the brochures were printed which was some time earlier? Various things had changed since then and hence the price increase.

I am in a Club , we are negotiating a coach holiday , the more club members we can get to go on the holiday the cheaper the fare , we have been going with this Coach Company for a few years and find it works

Good morning all! I have occasionally played this pricing ploy in reverse by booking at the very last minute and securing an excellent financial deal. Obviously this can backfire if the trip ends up fully booked but that has only happened twice in many years. That small word 'from' has much to answer for!

Airline pricing is totally inconsistent.

We have needed to book flights back to the U.K. at short notice to attend a funeral. A friend is going on the same flight and he told us the price he paid - when I looked hours later it had gone up by about £5. We were trying to work out where to stay and other various things so did not book for a few days - by then the price had reduced to less than £10!. I looked yesterday to see take off time and the price is now back up to where it started.
Our flight home is with a different airline and has remained the same all the time. Both airlines charged for a case in the hold and to reserve the seats if we wished to sit together.

Our local coach company has an opposite policy - if the trip is not fully booked a few weeks before they offer the remaining seats at reduced prices.

It is strange that we have never come across it before.We have been on many cruises and the price has always been that stated in the brochure however full the ship is.In fact I have always paid brochure price for any coach trips we have been on before.I can't speak for ferries and planes as we never use them.I still think it is deceptive practice.

It is what is known as 'dynamic' pricing and it is standard practice for all modes of transport; planes and ferries, and, to a limited extent, trains (government regulation of fares makes it difficult).

Prices constantly change to encourage/discourage people to book on certain boats. planes. coaches. We go to France a lot and shop around over several days and ferry times to get the best price and best booking time for the best price.

I have been on a few coach trips with (mainly) National and have never come across this Greenfinch.

This is what the airlines and, I think the railways all do, I think it is called dynamic pricing or some such title. If you look for the same flights several times you will see the prices go up the more you look. You can partially avoid this by deleting your cookies.

It would be interesting to know whether anybody paid the "from amount" that was originally quoted - but I suppose that is impossible to find out - which is perhaps what these companies rely on.