This is the third, and final entry about Farecast on Musings from the Coast. For those who don’t know, Farecast is a travel service that allegedly has a model that predicts airfare cost and advises travelers based on that when to purchase a ticket. Sounds great, right? It doesn’t work.

A good idea poorly implemented is apparently still worth something, perhaps $115M. Which is what Microsoft ponied up to bring Farecast into the family. Now Microsoft is a smart company and they must have done due diligence before the deal, but they didn’t talk to dissatisfied former customers like me. I could have saved them a bundle by showing them empirically with Farecast’s own data that taking the opposite advice of given would lead to the best price for travelers.

Well, now that Farecast has gotten their payday, I want mine. Using Farecast cost me $500 over two trips, when do I get my money? The Farecast team that wrote and promoted this piece of bovine feces has had a liquidity event. Where’s mine? And what about all the other schlubs who tried this flawed model and lost money?

Good luck Microsoft, you’re going to need it.