28th May 2008 - Buying plane tickets online? The price you see should be the price you pay

Labour Euro-MP for Yorkshire, Linda McAvan has voiced her concern that anyone buying plane tickets online is still faced with confusing and misleading prices on websites - and says that EU is right to act. Her comments come after an official European report suggested as many as a third of people buying tickets online end up "ripped off or confused and misled".

The report, published last week, indicated that as many as a third of sites selling tickets for planes were in breach of consumer law.

Common problems included;

1. insufficient or unclear information about price, where the price is split into a series of unavoidable charges, and only becomes clear at the end of the booking process;
2. special offers where there was eye-catching marketing but which were difficult if not impossible to find in reality;
3. unclear information on contract terms, either, missing, in another language, or illegible due to use of characters of another language.

The European Commission also reported that whilst half of the sites found to be in breach of the rules a year ago had now made improvements, the other half have not.

Linda McAvan said;

"Millions of us will fly off on holiday this summer, and many of those people will have bought their tickets online. It really shouldn't be difficult, but I know from my own experience just how frustrating it can be when that "too good to be true" offer turns out to be just that. The price you see should be the price you pay. Because flights and many of these websites are international, this is an area where the European Union can make a real difference."

The Commission is collecting evidence before considering possible new laws.  Linda will be keeping the pressure up so that consumers cannot be ripped off.