For those who do pay it, is it really worth the $50 anually? I'm asking because I need to book a flight from LAX to Riga, Latvia. The site shows me $600 tickets which is not that bad but the thing is I need to pay for extra luggage and that can easily add up. So im trying to figure if it is really worth to spend the $50 on the membership.
Does any one pays the premium membership of Going (used to be Scott's Cheap Flights)?
QuestionThis is a fantastic synopsis of the present day situation, well done. I got some insane deals via Scott's back in day but it has nosedived into mostly an irritant now - (but I of course still receive their emails, "just in case." You never know...)
Happy travels.
I remember the AMA he did when he decided to rebrand it Going. Everyone on the thread was advising him not to do jt, but he insisted this was better. Looks like he Musk’d all over it. I was a subscriber for Scott’s but the different subscription levels for Going turned me off (plus it’s a terrible name).
Edit: Here is the post
Thanks.
Just checked out FareDrop. It only really seems to work if you pay for premium. Is it worth it if I only take 1-2 trips a year?
For me yes… if you book at least 1 trip a year the deal will almost certainly cover the cost of subscription and then some. If you fly twice a year… then I double down on the “yes” answer.
If you have specific flights you’re looking for and times you’re looking to book I would probably not recommend it, just check google flights for those flight itineraries and dates every few days and you’ll see the deals pop up. You can also “watch” or “track” the specific flights on Google too.
But, if you’re down with going anywhere in the world and just need the ticket to be cheap… yeah FareDrop will absolutely save you money.
Thank you for letting me know! All great info
I remember that scotts cheap flights was way better! Thank you for the insight (: def going to take it into consideration!
I use Pomelo which is very similar to how Scott's Cheap Flights used to be. I only sign up for the free emails though.
I do pay for it, but it’s not really meant to be used for someone needing to go to a specific place at a certain date. It’s better for seeing a deal for a few places a day and then deciding to buy one and visit a new place. I think your situation would be better handled with a gooogle flight alert
I never got anything out of it in the last two years I was a member. It seemed like every deal wanted me to drive to San Antonio or Austin despite IAH being a much bigger airport.
I also never saw any of the fabled mispriced deals. Many of the "deals" were asking me to be flexible for very marginal savings.
I got the renewal email last month and immediately canceled.
FWIW, I haven’t seen a “mistake” fare (of any real savings) in like 3 years. I booked one to Scotland and one to Hong Kong before COVID but since then I haven’t seen a single one pop.
I had a mistake fare emailed to me recently by them but it was for an airport halfway across the country from me.
Yeah same, to Ireland from Chicago? My home airport is Bay Area
My home airport is Portland OR and it was for Minnesota to Ireland or something like that
I also got that one (Chicago to Dublin) but I also got a NYC (my airport) to Paris this past Thanksgiving weekend so it worked out. Never seen other mistake fares but was only Premium since slightly before the rebrand.
It seemed like every deal wanted me to drive to San Antonio or Austin despite IAH being a much bigger airport.
Bigger airport, but completely dominated by United. Less competition = fewer deals to be had.
These sites are only good for people who are incredibly flexible in their vacation days. If you have to go at a certain time of year from a certain airport, it won't be helpful.
Going is great for "I wanna fly and cheaply" and be flexible with the dates/locations. Like I got 750$ round trip flights to Egypt and 400$ flights to Amsterdam back before the pandemic. But if you need to fly a specific place/time then the list serve isn't going to be super helpful. You can always sign up for the free version(do they still have that?) and see what pops in but for your specific question is isn't going to help you because it's not a flight buying service it's a "look at this deal we found that may work for you, go look on Google and good luck" service.
I'm grandfathered into a much cheaper annual membership (I think like 40$) so for me it's fine even if I haven't used it as much recently but that is mostly because my trips have been "I need to be here on X dates" which isn't really how they work...
I canceled my membership after the giant rug pull, a couple years ago, and will not go back. Companies that screw their customers once will do it again.
What happened?
You're looking for very specific flights/routing/timing
I always found those newsletters more useful for those who have flexibility on origin, destination, and timing.
For yours, just search yourself. WYSIWYG.
what does WYSIWYG mean?
What you see is what you get
I canceled my membership recently after several years.
I have for several years. Found a flight from ORD to Brussels for $290 RT back in 2019. I figure if it helps me get one flight a year it is more than worth it. If you are flexible on date and destination it will help the most. Plus I enjoy reading the blog and have got information out of the points/miles that they've started doing recently. You'll get more value being by a major airport like I did when I was near Chicago. I see fewer details now that I'm only near two small airports and a 3 hour drive from DC
Maybe check out secretflying.com. It's free, and I've had good experiences with it. You can find flights accentially priced too low and can sign up your email to get alerts about when flights from specific airports have one of these cheap flights.
I have a subscription. They sent me an offer to renew for two years for $50. All it takes is one flight to make it pay off. The prices we get have made our friend’s jaws drop. It’s great if you’re flexible on timing and destination.
YMMV but after several months of not seeing a ton that interested me they sent me $114 MSP>DUB round trip mistake fare a week ago that I jumped at.
And they didn’t cancel it?
No. I think very generally speaking most airlines will eat an economy fare like that rather than face bad press.
I even got free exit row seats for some reason which is a first for me.
High five!! Enjoy your trip
Thanks!
I do. It has saved me thousands on flights, so it’s worth $50 a year. And I’m not flexible with what airports I can fly out of so I like being able to set my home airport and only get notifications about flights from there.
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If you have freedom to travel anywhere and live next to a major airport hub, it could be worth it. If not, there’s no point.
I like it for myself just to know of potential deals but you have to be very open on vacation dates.
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For your specific need with the luggage: absolutely not, it won’t help you with that. It will help you find general flight deals from your home airport, it cannot help you with luggage costs etc. The key to success with any of them is to have extreme flexibility with booking a random flight for a random date. I do that all the time and most flight deal alerts services are good for me. For your situation no flight deal service is a good choice. None of them will help you with your specific request.
That said…
More information than you may want about Going: I was a diamond subscriber on Going and ended up getting rid of it. The deal frequency was meh (not necessarily their fault, especially post covid), but overall the company was pretty annoying with how they kept changing things and adding different subscription levels and increasing prices for a service that was not getting better.
I was a Scotts Cheap Flight enthusiast for the last like… 15(?) or so years and got EVERYONE I knew to sign up for them and subscribe when they did their first subscription offering. Like… probably 50 or 60 people got subscriptions because of my experiences with their flight deals and repeated recommendations (because I hadn’t paid more than $400 for a flight since I signed up) so I was super enthusiastic about the company and really wanted them to do well… hence why I signed up for Going after the grandfathering thing ended. Currently no one I know has kept their subscription.
Now I actively recommend people avoid Going because the prices keep going up and the deals keep getting worse. Is it still useful? Absolutely, you may find some amazing deals. I just can’t stand behind the company any longer like I used to before the rebranding (and tbh, it was getting less good before the rebrand, but the rebrand just took everything all at once and turned it shitty).
Nowadays I use FareDrop and I like it much more - it’s simple, not annoying, they don’t keep changing things and charging me more every 6 months for a “rebrand update” and all updates I’ve seen from them have been, IMO, positive. I’ve been happy with them for the last few years (I signed up when Kara and Nate originally announced it) and I like everything I’m seeing.
Anecdotal: Just booked a business class deal to CDMX from earlier this afternoon for $712 from ATL. I had FareDrop and Going at the same time and deals were pretty close, with FareDrop being quicker and proving easier to identify the specific dates and routes in the app (and taking you directly to Google). Going had this weird thing where you would try to book it, but a good chunk of the time I could never actually find the deal via the website/email. I’d click it and it would be impossible to find. Hasn’t happened with FareDrop yet.