Jim Clarke: Blog

Be careful if you use the Aer Lingus hotel web site. A while back, I held off on booking my usual hotel because I had noticed some pretty decent prices for 4 star hotels in Brussels on the Aer Lingus site and I "booked" one and then learned a full 24 hours later that it didn't actually book it but made a suggestion for another hotel in a total different part of the city and at 40 euros more expensive to boot. They do, however, give you the opportunity to reject their counteroffer though at no charge, which I did without delay. I rang them up to complain and they pointed out to me that you have to select ones that have 'Available' written next to them, which I hadn't noticed on the site and/or during the booking process. Luckily, my usual hotel was still available at the same price as 24 hours previous. I would have been really steamed otherwise. I also noticed that Aer Lingus are now charging to select your seat. They charge 3 euros to reserve a seat and you have to go through the whole credit card payment process for this piddly amount. It occurred to me while doing it that this is a real dis-incentive to reserving seats because now more people won't do it because a. since they are being charged and b. you probably won't be guaranteed to have an empty seat next to you any more on non full flights. The whole purpose for picking your seat ahead of time is to choose seats that still have the seat next to you vacant (for example middle seats) so there is some chance the seat next to you will be vacant on non full flights but now if far less people are selecting their seat due to being charged and hassle of paying for it, Aer Lingus themselves will just randomly seat passengers into these seats and you will have people sitting there regardless of your pre-selection ;-(.