Looking for a crazy bus ride?
It’s a common problem when traveling as a couple: you’re looking for a plane, train, or bus ticket and you think you’ve found the perfect one. Then you go to buy it and find the price shoots up. What the?!
What happened is there’s only one cheap ticket left, and when you try to buy it for two people you’re getting one cheap ticket and one expensive.
It happened to us today when we tried to book a ticket from Toronto to New York City on Megabus. Megabus is known for having some super-cheap fares, if you can find them. And in this case, I’d found a great one: $12 per person for the 11 hour overnight bus trip.
Trouble was, when I entered two passengers, I got a price of $35 for both of us. We were getting the last $12 ticket, and then a more expensive $23 ticket.
Happily, there’s a way around this problem: two computers, simultaneously purchasing the low-priced ticket.
Two laptops in the same time
I got both our laptops ready, and did the ticket search again, for 1 passenger only. Both showed the $12 fare available. Then I added both tickets to the shopping carts, and went through the payment process on both computers, making sure to hit the ‘next’ button from each screen at the same time.
We made it all the way to the end, put in our payment details, and success! Two tickets purchased for a total of $24.
We’ve used this trick before, and it works with all kinds of tickets: air, train, bus, anything where there’s different classes of tickets with limited numbers available.
Here’s our method to make sure we’re getting the best price buying tickets for two:
- Always search for the best fare for only 1 passenger
- Once you’ve found the best fare, add a second passenger.
- If the fare per person stays the same, great!
- If not, use a second computer and purchase the same ticket twice, making sure to go through each step of the process at exactly the same time on both computers
Has this tip been helpful to you? Any ideas to share? Post a comment!
New York, here we come!
Tips by Ryan 
Sounds like a great idea, I’ll defiantly try it soon! I would have thought that more advanced online sites like airlines would restrict or send a “I’m sorry message” but I guess they’re still getting the money.
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Yea
We were happy when both transaction were going through!
Thanks for the tip! We’ve run across the price differences plenty of times, so next time I am going to give this a shot.
Good luck!
That is a great tip. And I saw the same thing happen to my 2 friends. They had to book a last minute airline ticket over the phone. One got their ticket, and then 5 minutes later my other friend called to get a ticket on the same flight, but the price was $500 more! In the end, they told the manager over the phone that they were traveling together, and the airline was able to get the 2nd ticket at the same rate.
Gerard ~ GQ trippin´s last post…my job quit me. now what?
That’s really nice that they allowed them to get the same cheaper price
$500 extra is horrible!
I did the same trick for booking hawaiian airlines a couple days ago, and it worked too.
We only have one computer, but opening two browser windows in one computer worked.
That’s awesome to know, thanks!
Tragically, I’ll probably never need this advice – I’m a victim of my own solo female traveler-itis. :-/
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Wow! How come we never thought of this? We always end up cussing while buying tickets – you may have saved us a bunch of grief!
-Veronica
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its upon you to get a discount
WoW! What a fantastic tip – something I’ve never thought about
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What an awesome trick!