How much is laziness worth to you?
Flight deals are all the rage, thanks to record breaking airline competition bring record low fares. There’s nothing quite like bagging a $600 round trip deal from the US to Australia in business class, or a $200 round trip flight from Europe to the US – and these things happen all the time. A couple sites like Jacks Flight Club and Scotts Cheap Flights have set out to monetize this craze which leaves the big question – are they worth your money?
The free version? Go for it, there’s no harm. Paid version? If you’re reading this, you’re likely an engaged enough traveler for this to be an open and shut NO. These sites are not using any tools that you do not have access to for free, and frankly they get some of their deals from sites like ours and others too (which are also free). Basically: any deal on their sites will be found all over the internet or directly in your inbox the same day. SO why pay? That’s not to say they aren’t very good deal hunters or nice gents (we’re sure they are), but there are no secrets on the internet. They aren’t doing anything which isn’t already offered for free, with one potentially possible, minor exception.
Case For Yes
There is a very thin case for yes, but we’ll play along. It’s the personalization. We share amazing flight deals every day from all over the world, and so does at least a dozen other top sites. Some, like SecretFlying send location specific deals too- but for free. Jack’s and Scott’s send location and cabin specific deals which are *perhaps* slightly more personalized to users. Basically, if you are too lazy to make two clicks on the internet to browse free resources and see the same deals, this style of service could *theoretically* be worth it. It just depends how much your laziness is worth to you.
Cannot Have
People always want what they cannot have. Creating sites with names such as Club, Secret or anything else that makes someone feel as if they are on the outside looking in is guaranteed free marketing. FOMO is a thing, you know. But don’t be fooled. Using intelligence feigning words like “scouring Matrix” really just means looking on a clunkier version of Google Flights. If you really want cheap flights, just follow this single piece of advice. You’ll always get the best prices.
What do you think of these new flight deal services?
I recently found the ITA Matrix, that’s such a powerful tool!
I’m genuinely surprised when I hear my friends say “Oh, I can’t go there, it’s really expensive”, when I can see flights for a fraction of the price on most search tools. I know people have to make money, but reselling something publicly available seems just poor to me. I’d rather educate and profit on advertising, than pretend to have special tools to search with.
Even if you’re the “bucket list” type, this advice seems only marginally accurate. Specifically, what two clicks will get me the info I want??
For me, it certainly wouldn’t work. If I set up trackers for every destination I would consider at various times of the year, I would have so many emails to look at I would spend hours reading them. In the same amount of time, I could earn more than enough money to make me not need a discount. Instead, for $39, I get a range of options in a condensed package. I may want to go to Croatia, but if a trip suddenly pops up to Bangkok for an irresistible price, and I didn’t happen to have that as a tracked flight, Croatia will wait. If I can get a year’s worth of deals for about $40, I would need to save about an hour or two a year to shoot past the break-even point, and possibly discover an option I hadn’t considered previously.
If I pay $30 for someone to spend an hour doing my yard work, while I do something that generates $100 of income, am I lazy for not trimming my own shrubs? Don’t confuse lazy with smart.
But when you paid $40 to get an email and everyone else got the same flight deal email at the exact same time – you are just the guy who paid $40 for free information.
GSTP: If your time is worth nothing, feel free to browse as many free sites as you want, hoping to find the combination of airports that work for you (or click twice, according to you). Or get a job where all you do is look at flight information all the time. Or, as you said you do, set up 250 price trackers. In any case, for the price of a tank of gas, I get filtered, timely, and valuable information delivered to my inbox for a year, saving me time and money. Your insinuation that I’m just a chump that was tricked out of $40 is grossly incorrect. I assume your opinion about people who use travel agents to book flights, cruises, and hotels that are just as available to the general public must be especially scathing, considering the cost of their service.
How much are you getting paid here? I’m saying sites like mine and tons of others send the same filtered, timely valuable emails every day for free. So why pay $40? Travel agents are great value, and if you weren’t just someone paid to defend these indefensible values – and an actual reader, you’d know I wrote about travel agents being phenomenal just last week.