A frugal life is an easy life!

This post could apply to any business, but has come to light now as I search pathetically for flights and or holiday accomodation on the internet.

My aim is simple - to find flights to San francisco and return from Las Vegas. I'll need a hire car as we want to drive down the pacific coast.

Every website search IS monitored - The more you and other people search for flights/holidays the more the price increases

The prices shown on websites are almost NEVER available - 7 websites for flights so far, on all of them the price shown increased significantly once I clicked to book or phoned them up to enquire.
EXAMPLES:
cheapflights.co.uk - quoting return flights to san francisco for £580 with air france (inc. taxes and fees) - when you click through to air france's website, enter all the details in again, cheapest flight they come up with is £977 per person.
cheapticket.co.uk - quoted return flights at £415 on cheapflights website, when you click through best price quoted is £235 per person plus taxes and fees. A quick phone call to them reveals that taxes and fees add on £350 to this price, which makes it a total of £585 per person.
They kindly did a quick search for cheapest prices and came back with £694 per person being their best offer. Miles away from the £415 they were quoting via the cheapflights website!
When I had the audacity to question why they were misrepresenting prices to people, they simply denied they were!

When quoted a price, ALWAYS ASK what it includes - I rang an airline directly for a quote, they were £1400 more than the cheapest website price for the same airline. When the lady had worked it all out, the prices the cheap flight websites had quoted were very different from what I had asked for!
I asked to include a seat for sprog2, I was given a price based on sprog2 being on my lap and not in her own seat, 23 hours of flying each way, that's a hell of a long time to be on my knee!
The difference in price for this alone was over £700
The cheap website tickets were also non refundable, nor were they open to be changed.
By this I mean, if a flight is delayed, we would in effect be left stranded and forking out for replacement tickets. If illness strikes and we are unable to travel, then we would lose our money and have to pay for replacement tickets ourselves. With the higher prices charged by the airline direct, the tickets are changable and include a seat for sprog2.

It is an absolute minefield buying a holiday/flights, online, on the phone or at a travel agents.

Is there a single occasion when you want to travel, that isn't either "Peak time" or "School holidays" or "In high demand"?

I'll end this post with a simple fact:
To fly to San francisco, spend 19 days there and fly back from Las Vegas, I have been quoted between £9000 and £12,200 - each one of those quotes tells me that it's inflated prices because of the taxes and the price of fuel (one even told me that crude oil is now at a record of $49 dollars per barrel!)
To fly to Orlando with the same companies, the price drops to £8870 to £12,000 - a stunning saving at best of £130, yet we would be flying thousands of miles and 16 hours LESS, yet saving less than £20 per person.

How does that work then?