The first question is did they actually take the £85 before they asked for more? If they haven't, they'll say they tried to get you the flight for £85 but can't and since the money never changed hands they'll say the contract never came into force.

Alternatively they may have taken the money but will have something in the terms and conditions which says that the contract doesn't come into force until the tickets are issued and they are only liable to refund the actual money paid if they can't complete.

This sort of thing has been happening all summer, especially on flights to Turkey. And OTB aren't the only ones doing it. As long as they do let you have the money back straight away they are legal.

They've bizarrely taken £1.01 and £172.51 from my bank account even though the total on the booking was £206 after taxes/baggage etc. Feel so aggrieved by this. How can they advertise flights at price A and then increase it after it's booked? What's the point have industries regulated if this kind of stuff is going on?! It's looking increasingly likely that I'm just going to have to pay up as my entire holiday was booked around that flight price. Do I really have no comeback at all!? This all just seems so wrong
Any help/advice would be very gratefully recieved

Their T&Cs are at http://www.otbeach.com/btob.html?id=pSYy5YXH and to be fair they are not only clear but explain how the business works. If you booked online you will have clicked something to say you read these first. The Online Booking section explains how they recontact the airline to confirm the price is still available.

The bottom line is that they did not advertise a flight at a price, they advertised a negotiating service and said they'd try to get you that price.

There is also a note that that they will debit your card with two amounts, their booking fee and the amount passed to the airline. And that's where your case gets odd because the small amount is not the fee for the large amount - and as you say they don't add up to the total amount you thought you were paying! The booking fee should be more than £1.01 but nowhere near the missing amount, so something you think you've booked hasn't been paid for - I'm guessing a baggage fee. If you do go ahead check your paperwork carefully, you don't want any problems at the airport because the charges there could be a lot higher.

Just for the record, where are you going and which airline was the offer for?

You've learnt 2 important lessons here:

Never go ahead with a contract if you haven't read and understood the terms.

Never book a holiday without checking things out on this site first - OTB booking issues are a regular event.

'On the Beach' are very clear that they dont use 'live prices' on their site.

They are not my kind of company as too many problems reported, but you can't really argue that they are not up front about it.

Ended up swallowing my pride (and my principles) and paid the extra fee. Still don't see the point adverting and selling things for a price that isn't worth the screen it's printed on. At best it's misleading and at worst it's an underhand scam whereby the company hopes the price goes down in the meantime so they make extra cash but charge you the extra if it goes up. Either way it seems that the customer always loses and On The Beach are in a win-win situation. If anyone reads this down the line and wants to know what to do then my advice would be to use on the beach to find things by all means but then book flights/hotels through other people. The price you see is not the price you pay so for that reason - I'm out!!

You've put your finger on the dodgy part of this type of business - what happens when the price goes down? Flight prices vary almost as much as share prices so the price they advertise is just about the one price it won't be! The other issue that has cropped up with similar companies is that a flight is advertised and the payment taken but even worse than the price going up, the flight has filled up and isn't available. So you can't even pay the extra and you would have been stuck with the your other bookings and no flight.

The only ray of sunshine here is that OTB do state that they will get confirmation within 48 hours (some agents have left it for weeks). So as long as you wait for confirmation you are safer to go off and book everything else. If you need a "spare" seat on a charter flight you are stuck with this type of business but I can't see why anyone would use them for scheduled flights.

Sometimes a small" fee "is something that is done by the merchant to test out the viability of a credit card. As far as I am aware it is not usually something that the cardholder has any knowledge of and is a pending transaction that is refunded "behind the scenes "so to speak.Perhaps someone else into the ways of banking and credit will be able to comment on that. It can also be used by card cloners to test whether a credit card is viable for a subsequent larger amount without the cardholder's knowledge. If the small amount does not cause the card to be flagged up then it is OK for subsequent transactions.I am not suggesting that this is the case here. I have no idea.It is an odd amount.