Random Rant About Discount Ticketing Agents

Those of you who have had the pleasure of purchasing a relatively cheap air ticket may have experienced what I am about to say. Those of you who plan to purchase these in the future, read this. Unless you have lots of money laying around. Some time ago (I am deliberately being vague to protect the innocent, or guilty, however you want to look at it), I went on a trip with someone. We utilized the services of a rather large discount ticketing agent here in china. [see eLong.net](http://www.elong.net). The tickets, round trip, were on average 35% the cost of ’normal’ tickets to this same destination. Great. Saving some money. And, it happened to be with a decent airline too. That’s all fine and dandy, **if** you happen to get to the dang airport ON-TIME. We happened to be 5 minutes late (past check-in cut-off) and the ticketing agent told us that basically, we were shit out of luck. So much for a cheap ticket. Not transferable. Not refundable. Not nothing! We ended up having to purchase a full-fare return ticket. Nice. and how convenient - all the freaken airlines flying back to Beijing had the same price!! What ever happened to competition?! In the U.S., it is common to see 2 or sometimes 3 gas stations at the same intersection, but they would have different prices - different by pennies. You look at the Mobil across the street that happened to be 3 cents more than the one you were at, and you would wonder “who the hell would go there when it is 3 cents cheaper here?!”. I guess that doesn’t work in the airline industry when it comes to full price fares. Did my little analogy make sense? It should of, or you need help.