On the Web, Buyers Face a Fee-Finding Mission

The Internet is the latest playing field in the tug-of-war over how service fees and other add-ons should be presented to buyers of airline tickets.

One team is made up of Web travel seller Orbitz and its supporters. On the other team, so far, are competitor Travelocity and a group of travel agents. The U.S. Department of Transportation is the referee. And the fraying rope is us, the traveling public.

What’s at stake is how we shop for bargains and compare deals.

In the last two months there has been a flurry of petitions and responses filed with the DOT over Internet service fees on airline tickets. On Dec. 3, Orbitz, the site owned by five airlines that made its debut in June and quickly became one of the top-10 Internet travel sellers, announced it was phasing in a service fee of $5 per airline ticket. It asked to be exempt from the DOT’s long-standing ban on travel sellers listing service fees separately from air fares.

Just four days later, saying the “public interest” required it to act without allowing the normal time for public comment, the DOT granted the exemption for Orbitz. On Dec. 19 it issued a revised policy that lets all Internet travel sellers list their fees separately, unlike offline travel agents, who are supposed to abide by the old rules.

Adding to the confusion, the new DOT policy states that it doesn’t apply to airlines even though they typically sell tickets on their own Web sites. When I asked DOT spokesman Bill Mosley to clarify, he said airlines aren’t considered Internet travel sellers for the purpose of the decision.

A week later Travelocity filed a petition asking the DOT to reconsider, accusing the federal agency of inconsistency and Orbitz of violating the revised policy.

On Jan. 4, Radius, a worldwide consortium of more than 100 travel agencies, entered the fray, saying the DOT’s revised policy discriminates against consumers and traditional travel agents. And on Jan. 7, Orbitz fired off a response to Travelocity’s petition, accusing it of having an “unsavory agenda.”

Internet travel titan Expedia, which doesn’t charge service fees, stayed on the sidelines. But in public comments, it criticized Orbitz’s new fee as anticonsumer--even as Expedia itself, on Dec. 4, was fined $40,000 by the DOT for listing fares that excluded so-called fuel surcharges from one of its search paths. The surcharges, which airlines began imposing in 2000 to compensate for higher fuel costs, are about $20 each way. The DOT requires all travel sellers to include them in quoted fares. (Expedia says it is now in compliance.)

Why so much angst about $5? It can make a difference. In a recent survey that ran 60 simultaneous Internet fare searches on Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity plus 10 airline-owned sites, Orbitz beat or tied the lowest fare 73% of the time, according to Thomas Weisel Partners, the investment bankers who conducted the survey as part of their ongoing research. But when the survey factored in the $5 service fee, Orbitz’s score fell to 56%.

Not surprisingly, each party in these conflicting filings claims to be acting in consumers’ interest. But which really is?

Of Orbitz and Travelocity, online expert Henry Harteveldt, a senior analyst with Forrester Research, says: “Both companies could probably do a better job of communicating fees to the public.”

The new DOT policy allows Orbitz and other Internet travel sellers to post service fees on their home page or in a pop-up box linked to the home page. In Orbitz’s case, this note appeared on the home page when I checked it Jan. 15: “Orbitz Services and Fees. Learn the latest.” I clicked on the note, and a pop-up announced the amount of the fees. When I used the “quick flight search” to find fares, the fare appeared in bold type, followed by lighter type with the fee and total.

Why not just list the fee on the home page? Customers surveyed “said it was not necessary to see it on the home page,” says spokeswoman Carol Jouzaitis. And Orbitz wants to keep its design uncluttered, she says.

Besides, she adds, Orbitz is more upfront than its competitors. On the latter she has a point.

Here’s what my own survey of travel sites on Jan. 15 showed:

* Travelocity, www.travelocity.com, didn’t have a service fee except for Northwest Airlines tickets. The $10 fee was not listed on the home page.

But when a search turned up a Northwest fare, the fee notice appeared three times, once with a red exclamation mark. Why was it not on the home page? Spokesman Al Comeaux says Travelocity defines “upfront” as “the first time you see the price.”

* Trip.com, www.trip.com, didn’t list a service fee on the home page either. Until recently it charged a $10-per-ticket service fee plus a $5 “processing fee.” On Dec. 20, a day after the DOT issued its new policy, it dropped those fees. (The timing was a coincidence, says spokeswoman Dawn Lyon.) But like several sites, it separately charged fees for issuing paper tickets, and it had extra fees for cancellations. To find these, I had to do a search, then click on “service fees” by the itinerary I wanted, which called up a pop-up box listing 15 possible fees. “Our goal is certainly not to make it [fees] confusing,” Lyon says.

* Cheap Seats Travel, www.cheapseatstravel.com, also didn’t list fees on its home page. When I searched for air fares, it took three mouse clicks (including a display of fares without the fee) to arrive at the service fee, listed in smaller type next to my chosen itinerary: “USD 10.00 Processing Fee per ticket.” Company President Tom Spagnola’s comment about this: “We really can’t quote the processing fee until the people agree to the price of the ticket, I guess.”

* Cheap Tickets, www.cheaptickets.com, didn’t display fees on its home page. Its “Express Search” showed a $3.95 “order processing fee” when it first displayed fares. Its “Power Search,” which finds fares “excluding surcharges, fees & taxes,” according to a note on the home page, did just that, adding the service fee later when I checked if seats were available.

Fee, fee, who’s got the fee? It’s not a fun game for consumers.

As for offline travel agencies represented by the Radius filing, they also have a point: The playing field is not equal for online and offline sellers, making it hard for consumers to know who is offering the best deal. If offline sellers appear to be charging higher prices because they wrap in fees, “travelers will remove their business from travel agencies,” the filing says.

Who hasn’t weighed in on this issue yet? The traveling public. But you can do so by visiting the DOT’s document site, dms.dot.gov. Click on “Search” and enter the last five digits (11086) of Docket No. OST-01-11086 to read the filings so far. Click on “Help” on the home page for instructions on how to make your views known.

Meanwhile, we consumers will need to follow the “Buyer, beware” dictum. And to that add a new one: “Find the fees.”

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Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.