E-Bookers & Aer Lingus Problems

I was on the ebookers site this evening and managed to find a really good fare with Aer Lingus from Dublin to Boston in September for €218.25 RTN.

I went through the booking process and gave my personal and credit card details online with e-bookers. When they recieved all this personal information - a message pops up that the fare is no longer available.

At this stage I was concerned that money was debited from my credit card - but I had no confirmed flight.

It turns out my card was debited €2 by e-bookers.

Has my €2 disappeared and more importantly has my €218.25 cheap flight disappeared (If I ever had it in the first place)

Was there any offer - consideration and acceptance ?

Should I just accept I've lost €2 and a great flight deal because of a mix up between e-bookers and aer lingus.

Any advice folks?

I dont wish to be rude but are sure that ebookers had a return flight price to USA for ca. 200 ?
I only ask as the average EI price in Sept is 500 - 600 euros.

If you are sure that Ebookers were advertising that price then obviously this was their error which the computer picked up on when doing your booking.

Yes you've lost two euros unless you want to spend time explaining this on the phone to ebookers.

(Travel companies dont sell EI web fares cheaper than EI except....
... Sometimes travel companies buy in bulk from EI and, at the last moment, they may discount at fares cheaper than EI's -not because those travel companies have a great price from EI but because they wish to off-load the seats at any price.
Obviously this is not the case with a USA ticket some months ahead -and at such a crazy price)

BUT Aer Lingus and United codeshare and I've seen offers on United's own website of €195 return for various US destinations, usually for travel in Jan/Feb though.

The €2 thing is usually a test some online booking engines run to check that your credit card is valid. It would have been deducted off your ticket purchase cost...seeing as you weren't able to complete it I would imagine it will be refunded in due course.

Update on E-Bookers

I called e-bookers and they told me there was a problem in that Aer Lingus gave them the wrong flight prices and hence they could not confirm the booking.

I knew myself it was too good to be true - but it definately was advertised at that low price - and yes I double checked it was a return price.

As for the €2 charge - I was told that would be refunded in 4-5 working days and was simply done to check the valadity of my credit card.

There certainly was an error on e-bookers or aer lingus's behalf in uploading prices for a short period of time yesterday. Unfortunately for me they copped their mistake in the time it took me to fill in my credit card details.

Had a similar problem with ebookers today , got 2 seats to Newark for €708 , proceeded to book - they took €2 off my Visa then the flights vanished.
03/06/2010
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