Saturday, April 14, 2007

Air tickets out of Budapest: False advertising?


I was passing by Octogon and in the window saw an advertisement for a ticket to Japan for 130,000 forints. I thought to myself, wow, that's a good price! So I went in and asked about the price and was told 270,000, plus tax. Now that's more than double the advertised price, what is going on?


The lady said that those prices were for April. Fine, said I, get me a ticket for April for 130,000, I will fly to Japan tomorrow. Then she was on the phone trying to find out what had happened. Not getting me a ticket for 130,000 but trying to figure out who put that price in their window. I glanced down at the business cards on her desk and realized that she was the manager of the travel agency so she should have known about the prices in her own office.

After she spent 10 minutes on the phone while I waiting, I gave up. Just wanted to move on with my life. But here is my question. Isn't there some sort of regulation against false advertising here? Or is this not considered false advertising?


Last summer I went into the tourist information office at Deak-ter (or Erzebet-ter, I never know where the boundary lies) by the long distance bus station. I saw the ad in the window saying that you could go with a bus to Prague for a ridiculously cheap amount. At the time, we did want to go to Prague so this looked promising. Inside they told us, yes, they would be happy to take us to Prague but for 3 times the amount. Yes, this was with the same bus but those discounted seats were already sold. Since I was not in a great hurry to get to Prague, I said fine, get me on the next bus on which the discounted seats are still available. But I was told that these discounted seats were booked for a long way ahead.


As it turned out there were only 2 such seats on the bus (maybe per month) and these were always booked. Always. To my question why would they advertise something they could not deliver, the guy said with a happy smile, "Otherwise you would not have come in!"


Now isn't that nice! What a clever thought...

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Shooting on the tram: Friday the 13th


Last Friday someone was shot on one of the Combino trams in Budapest. I have not actually read the news about it just overheard people talking about it. Apparently, there was an argument and one party drew a gun and shot the other one in the face.


Combinos are the new Siemens trams that have been acquired last year amidst a lot of public debate. They travel along the routes of trams #4 and #6, passing just outside my window.


Anyone has any updates on what happened on that black Friday? Was the shooting fatal?


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