The following is a screenshot of a Farecast prediction described in detail below
A few weeks ago I wrote an entry saying that Farecast looks like an interesting travel tool. Well, now, having used it for two trips, I can say without reservation, it sucks. A commenter on the earlier entry said as much…
“That’s pretty strong, why do you say it sucks?” some of you might ask. Here’s why: I’ve used it to watch two trips, one high volume route San Francisco to New York and one lower volume, San Francisco to Cincinnati. The results were identical. Since the SFO to CVG flight has the longer data trail, it’s more interesting. Here’s what I experienced:
- May 13, set initial price of $485 per ticket, Farecast prediction, fares will decrease an average of $150 to $335 per ticket.
- Week 1, fares go up $50 per ticket. Farecast prediction: wait, fares will decrease.
- Week 2, fares go up $90 more per ticket ($140 per ticket up now for those keeping score at home.) Farecast prediction, fares will decrease.
- Week 3, fares go down to $594 per ticket. Farecast prediction, fares will decrease.
- Week 4, fares go up to $720 per ticket. Farecast prediction, fares will decrease.
- Week 5, fares go up to $817 per ticket. Farecast prediction, fares will increase (really? Duh.)
- Week 6, fares go up to $1017 per ticket. That’s a net increase of $532 per ticket over published prices and a delta of $682 of the predicted fare of $335 on May 13. If that doesn’t constitute suckage on an airfare prediction web service, I don’t know what does.
- Of the 48 days of tracking fares, Farecast’s predictions were wrong 42 days and were right 6 days. Simply another dimension of suckage for the same service. A coin toss would have yielded substantially better results than the Farecast prediction service.
My only regret is not taking them up on their $9.95 insurance program that would make up the difference between the fare prediction and ticket price and booking at $1017 per ticket to collect the money. That would help their going out of business plan accelerate…It’s rare a service performs so badly in practice. I still like the RSS feeds keeping you informed of the air fare pricing situation. If they just did that and nuked the predictions, it would probably be ok.
Over a shorter time period, the SFO->LGA fares showed similar trends of prediction.
So, what did I do? I lost faith in Farecast by about the 10th day and started looking for better airfare. I booked the tickets at the beginning of June through Orbitz at $432 a piece going to an alternate airport, Columbus.
If you use Farecast for information, great, but don’t trust their predictions for a single minute.
Actually, if you just do the opposite of what Farecast says then you’ll be right 87.5% of the time. It’s the George Constanza rule.
Hey there,
We have one thing in common — Round on the ends and Hi in the middle but I can’t disagree with you more on regarding Farecast. I have been following three flights that two that i took and one i am still tracking. I have had brilliant success. Sorry to hear you had such bad luck. I think Farecast is very useful and has saved my family and me over $300 at this point for two trips. Farecast Rocks.
-Go Buckeyes!
Can’t Standz Ya! Forgot about that, you’re right Kevin….
TBDBITL, I’m glad that it’s worked for you. But, buyer beware. I’m 0 for 2 on this thing. Maybe it’s the routes?
Meanwhile, GO BUCKS!
Written from the waiting lounge at ORD enroute to CMH…
Sorry you had a bad experience, Mike. Hope you’ll give us another shot. By the way, a 3rd party recently looked at over 44,000 Farecast predictions and validated the accuracy at 74.5%. More here: http://farecastblog.com/blog/2007/05/audit-reveals-farecast-predictive-accuracy-at-745/
Mike
Farecast.com
BS farecast guy. I’m out 600 bucks because I was dumb enough to use your horrible predictions. To anyone thinking of using this “service”, you’ve been warned. If you’ve read this, and still use farecast, don’t complain when you’re out hundreds of dollars.
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If their overall accuracy is 74.5%, and they say that a fare will increase/decrease $X with, say, 63% certainty, doesn’t that mean that they have an actual chance of being correct equaling 74.5% of 63%, which is actually 46.9% chance of being correct…worse than flipping a coin?
Earl, last time I check flipping a coin was a 50/50 proposition, so yes, 46.9% is worse than 50%. Farecast still sucks and I never got my money back from those dirtbags.
totally agree, farecast SUCKS!