[Resolved]  Cleartrip.com / Flight Tickets — Unjustified display of false prices

I was trying to book an air ticket from Delhi to San Francisco for December 2010. Obviously, I went to every travel site and compared the rates. Surprisingly, every airline was offering a fare of around INR 56000 but Cleartrip alone was offering the same flight at INR 51211. I started booking the flight and eventually when I entered all my details, it said the flight is not available at that rate. The new rate that it showed was Rs. 55600+. I thought that really might be the same so I left the booking at that time. Some time later I returned to cleartrip and found the previous rate of Rs. 51211. I thought wow! I went ahead to book and again the same error message, flight rate has changed. I tried this same thing 10-15 times in 3 days and result was always the same.

Therefore, here is what I think is cleartrip,s strategy. Show very low rates to the customers and lure them to your site. Then when they go for booking tell them that that rate is exhausted and show them the actual rate. There are very little chances that the customer will go to any other site if the rate is comparable and thus by duping the customer with false rates, they try to get business.