| City Breaks Guide on Deckchair |
I have used Deckchair.com a few times but after alot of effort and a fair trail I do not recommend this site.
The site is easy to use and is pretty well set out – it’s just a shame that the prices are rubbish.
After you go through the initial screen (and the guest login now makes that faster) you need to enter your desired details like any other on line flight reservation service.
The speed of the service has improved significantly over the year and you soon get a great matrix of flights. A tab on the left shows you the airline and on each tab is a table showing the flight times across the top and the range of ticket prices down the side. Choose the flight and price you are happy with for you outbound and inbound flights and click “next” to see your final itinerary. If you are happy, click “pay” and you are away!
Easy in theory!
I have used this site numerous times and never ever been able to actually book the ticket I wanted. Here is an example.
I wanted to book 2 return tickets from London to Rome leaving Friday PM and returning Monday PM. I put all these details in and was offered around 6 airlines (Lufthansa / BA / Alitalia / etc) offering fares from £101 (+ tax) bargain! (As a comparison – Travelocity was starting around £195, E-bookers had a flight with tax for BM around £154, but the site choked and fell over when I tried to book it – on more that one occasion! … and Expedia was also around the £200 mark), so this deal looked tops.
As I scanned through each of these airlines tabs the most of the rows showing the £101 price category were marked with “sold out”. So the £101 was not actually the lowest fair available, but was the lowest fair that was obviously offered at some point if I book 10 years in advance.
However – Alitalia showed that it still had tickets in the £101 price category so I selected the out and return flights I liked and clicked to pull up my itinerary. The screen churned for a while and then returned in big red print “flight / pricing not valid – please select another combination”. Ahhh so the £101 seats were no good after all. Trying the £140 seats I received an itinerary but it came with a caveat stating “we could not get the price you requested so this was the next best price - £168 inc. tax”.
Not bad and still £30 cheaper each that the competitors – so I logged in and proceeded to book. I entered my credit card details and then was told to wait for a reservation number. I then experienced the worst thing online shoppers dread – a break in the system. The reservation confirmation screen disappeared and I was back looking at a matrix of flight – did I book? Where had my credit card details gone? ARGH!!!!!!!!
I quickly dropped a note off to their customer support (they tell you they don’t take phone calls) but was AMAZED to get a response in about 2 mins confirming that I HAD NOT had my flight confirmed. The nice customer support guy suggested I call their phone reservation service (doesn’t it always end up this way – why bother booking online!!).
On the phone things did not get much better. The support was very friendly and helpful – but these great prices could not be confirmed. In the end the operator gave up and said she would call me back. She did and after a lot of searching she found £190 fares (inc tax).
So at the end of the day I paid around £70 more than what they initially had offered for a flight and incurred a huge amount of hassle.
Not a bad site to check availability for flights – but the pricing is horrible, as their site is not on-line with the airlines.
More details
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Layout & Design Good
Navigation Good
How fast is this website? Fast
Quality of the Content Very poor
Security & Privacy Statement Very poor
Ability to Customise Poor
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