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Comment by MichaelGG | Hacker News Reader

The thing that bothers me here is the same as with 99Designs. You pay an award fee but that only goes to the winner, right?

After using 99Designs a couple of times, I'm happy with the results, but probably won't use such a system again; it just feels a bit exploitative. I know, people elect to enroll in the system and compete so it's "fair" that way, but it just feels sorta icky to know I had X people spending so much time on my project and they get no compensation at all.

Maybe on FlightFox trips are usually shorter, easier, and less money, so it's not as bad - is that the case?

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In my case on Flightfox, the person was clearly just using some software. The time investment was probably minutes.

The value for me is that this person knows all of the rules -- cheap legs, good days to fly, how to get X or Y, fare codes, etc. Plus they have the underlying software that powers ticket searching, they don't have to use ridiculously terrible web portals like us normal folk.

In my case, Flightfox took what was a simple round trip "I am flying to Sydney for a conference" for $2400 and turned it into:

* Fly to Sydney * Return via Manila, stop for a week * Return via Hong Kong, stop for a few days * Return to San Francisco

They teased out my layovers into full-fledged stops, and brought the total cost down to $2100. They found a way to get way more value out of this trip than I would have otherwise.

Of course -- then they gave me a pile of fare codes and letters and said "call the airline, good luck!" I haven't actually booked the tickets. :(

Curious: given that you saved about $300 despite all the extra time abroad, aren't you just making up for it by spending more on accommodations and food?

I mean, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but you aren't saving that much more, I gather. If at all.

Absolutely, yes. In my case I was annoyed that my round trip from Orbitz took me through Hong Kong for 3 hours, so I went to Flightfox to see if I could make it 3 days. They said yes -- AND made the flight cheaper!

The other option was to try to book multiple round trips or a multi-city with Orbitz/Expedia/etc and in my case it was driving the cost way up. I wasn't happy with the result, and couldn't get the price sub-$3500 to do what I want -- and then I would have had to pay food and accomodations on top of the higher price.

Hi Michael,

We have a lot planned to reduce the amount of unpaid work. Think of getting quotes from say a plumber. A handful may offer free quotes and then you choose one to complete the work. The initial quote does take some effort, but only a fraction of the total effort.

We're working towards this "free quote" model. There will always be a significant amount of work required upfront, but if we can increase value more and more on the backend, the upfront work will reduce in comparison and get closer to, for example, a plumber's "free quote".

Also, as someone else suggested, the experts tend to find flights much quicker than the rest of us. Sometimes it's software, and sometimes it's just from doing it so often.

How is this similar to getting a quote? The flightfox agent has done all the work either he/she wins or not. This is nothing like plumber quotes.

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