Newly discovered Allegiant fee!

As an avid reader of this column I am acutely aware of all the fees Allegiant tries to sneak by you if you do not pay attention. $15 shuttle fee, $15 seats, $10 Priority boarding, $75 no charge change fee - all of which you are automatically charged and you have to 'unclick' them if you don't want them - which I do not. But here is a new one, at least to me. When I just booked a flight for this month to Vegas, only after I had purchased the ticket and received the email confirmation did I see a $34.00 'Convenience fee' ($17 per person). It had never shown up on the screen before. I immediately emailed Allegiant and asked what this was for and was this ever disclosed to me during the booking process. They replied that is was for the 'convenience' of using their internet web site to book my ticket (even though every other airline in existence now charges less for the web site booking and more for talking to an agent) and I would find that it was disclosed in the box I clicked before agreeing to purchase (4 pages of fine print, in the 15 paragraph down the list, stuck among the other government taxes and charges). I emailed back and asked if I had been offered a way to avoid this fee when I booked on the web site. They responded by telling me to go back to the web site, click on 'Tools' at the top of the page, click on 'Terms and Conditions' and again scroll through several paragraphs of fine print to find a short statement in parentheses that if I went to the airport and booked through an agent at the counter I could avoid the $17 convenience fee. Very convenient! Buyer be ware!!

Appalling.

Both the airline industry and customers would benefit greatly from enhanced consumer protection laws that would make such outrageous pricing practices illegal.

Airlines should be able to charge what they want. But what they charge should be transparent and readily understood by customers. Is that really so radical?

I have flown Allegiant once years ago. Got to Vegas and back- nothing special. The next time I checked fares with them it seemed they had their add on's in place and if you did not want them you had to check them off to get to the airfare. A tiresome process to say the least. Now this "hidden fee" to book online. What a bunch of B.S. Makes one wonder that if an airline can resort to such devious means to rip off customers out of a buck if they also resort to devious means about performing and reporting scheduled airplane maintenance. I won't fly with them again.

Bad!!!

I read somewhere that the government is about to force airlines to include their total charges for a flight including all taxes before you are committed to paying.

We have had this for years. Last flight I checked rates online then drove to the airport to buy tickets. When I got there the flight had gone up $40 each. I thought I was getting scamed by the ticket clerk but when I got home I found out the fare had changed while I was enroute to the airport. Sometimes you just can't win.

I also noticed that purchasing exit row seats now costs $17.99 each way - up from $14.99 when I booked in April. They are really nickel and diming us to death!!!

Allegiant's had these fees for years...you didn't notice them before? You can avoid them by purchasing your ticket in-person at the check-in counter at your local airport (which seems pretty dumb to me - surely tying up an Allegiant employee at the counter for 10 minutes costs the company more than someone using their website).

The downside to THAT, aside from time spent making the trip to buy tickets, is that Allegiant has very limited hours at most airports, usually an hour or two a day after they've gotten a flight out, and they make it hard to find out exactly when those hours are. At our local airport, the only place I've found their ticketing hours is buried deep on website for the airport itself...nothing on Allegiant's site. I imagine it's a little better if you live in Vegas, Orlando, or one of their "destination" cities.

Their nickel-and-diming does get tiresome, but considering that the next-closest airports with direct flights to Vegas are a 6-hour roundtrip away, I'll grudgingly put up with most of their little hassles in return for a cheap direct flight.

Allegiant realizes it costs the company more to book at ticket at airport versus online. However, they also realize that vast majority of folks will not travel to airport to do this.
Technically, it is a convenience for me to book online rather than drive 40 miles roundtrip to airport to save the online booking fee. But, it is still gouging in my eyes.

You have to option like I do....... No resort fees and no checked baggage fees. I make sure that I let companies know that the fees have driven me to their competition. I used to be a big flyer with Delta and USAir... no more. Only Southwest and Jet Blue from now on.

I love dashing off notes to the airline/ hotel web sites letting them know that their policies have driven me elsewhere. sometimes I get interesting replies.

i have been flying allegiant for about a decade.PIA-LAS. the fees i have gotten use to and i do look very closely @ time of purchase. LAS-PIA now has a wheels up time of 7:30a pst so i arrive @ mccarren about 5:30a. on the good side the flight is direct and no it has no glamor of class 1 airlines but to me it serves its purpose. i do "pick my seat" and carry on. if allegiant has a late arrival in vegas,say after 4p and yes @ 1 time they did,i go through DEN and arrive LAS about 4 hours b 4 allegiant even arrives in PIA. sweet deal!!!!