TripIt Online Itinerary Planner

[AdamR]

Re: Tripit gate information

How does Tripit Pro compare to WorldMateGold :?:

I admit I had not heard of WorldMate until your post. From a quick review of the website, it seems there is a big overlap between the services. Tripit seems to have less booking features, only rescheduling of flights. Other reviews I read quickly just now seem to say that Tripit's itinerary creation and delay notifications etc are slightly better. Most important though, Tripit Pro is about half the price.

For my needs, which is mainly just keeping my itineraries and booking details and being informed of check-in times and delays, Tripit Pro has been fantastic. I also use the 'PointTracker' feature which shows all my FF and hotel memberships and point totals in the one place.

Other family members also use Tripit, so I can keep track of where they are too.

 

[chrisb]

Thoughts on TripIt Pro

What are peoples thoughts on TripIt Pro?

I have a few issues with it -

• Qantas moved some flights in December by about 25mins. TripIt either doesn't know or doesn't care. It's still telling me it's checking and they're ontime (the wrong time)
• Changing flights is annoying. It'd be nice if TripIt could figure out the flight times from the Internet rather than me having to figure it all out.
• You can't create multi-day meetings such as conferences.
• It'd be nice if you could attach PDF's.
• It'd be nice if it talked to the GDS and kept track of them.

Otherwise, it is a nice way to keep organised.

 

[QF029]

Re: Thoughts on TripIt Pro

It only seems to monitor flights within 72 hours.

Flight not monitored/changes not reflected. : TripIt Help Center

 

[Danger]

Re: Thoughts on TripIt Pro

I'm a fan although I too have found the issue with flight re-timings. On a couple of occasions TripIt Pro has not picked them up at all, even days or more out (even when it then falls within the 72 hours before departure). Delay notifications have been a bit hit and miss but generally hit. It's very US-centric, though and I think that's where you'd get the most benefit. When I get the email about a flight delay, the number for the airline to call is the airline's US number.

 

[DeKa]

Re: Thoughts on TripIt Pro

Don't bother with it.. It's not worth it in Australia, as there aren't enough alternative flight routings for it to advise on. It may be worth it in the US.

Saying that, I had TripIt Pro SMS and email me on day as I was on my way to the airport saying my flight (CX I think it was) was cancelled. I got to the airport to find that wasn't true at all, and took a photo of the departures screen to prove it. I emailed a complaint to TripIt, and they refunded my fee in full. Based on that alone, I wouldn't use their service.

 

[Andyc]

Re: Thoughts on TripIt Pro

I've found it to be great.
The problems mentioned already sound valid, but are issues I've never encountered (false cancellations) or don't apply to me (multi-day meetings).

I particularly like it for longer holidays where I love to have everything in my calendar but can't be bothered typing all the details in. With TripIt I just fwd the email and its done.
I know this isn't a feature of TripIt Pro but I find it so useful that I'm happy to support the app developers.

The on-time/cancellation notes have always been quite good and the one time I emailed feedback on the app to the company, it was implemented.

Lastly, the point tracker works very well... but personally I don't look at it very often. I save for larger rewards rather than more frequent usage so I tend to have a pretty good idea of my points balances without the app.

 

[marks]

Re: Thoughts on TripIt Pro

I've used it with QF domestically and QF & AA to the US. The SMS were first annoying but handy when you get the SMS that arrival planes are late and ETD have been pushed back. Takes the edge off that rush to the airport.
I'm also sharing the details of large family trip with the extended family to ensure everyone has an updated travel plans.

 

[dot]

Re: Thoughts on TripIt Pro

I have so many issues with the free service that I refuse to buy the pro service - from my point of view, if they can't get their base capability right, then how can I trust that the pro service wont also be busted?

Some issues I have (all raised previously with tripit support):

1. Milage calculations are way off - they have some bizarre calculation method based around distance from your home address rather than actual flight distances (eg. Tript says I have done 303,862km this year, but on flightmemory.com, it is 344,052km - thats 12% discrepancy - but at the end of last year, it was nearly 20% discrepancy)
2. Everything is based on US West coast time - updates to my current location don't occur until that date on the US West coast - as we're on the other side of the date line, it takes the better part of a day for my location to be updated, by which time it may be wrong anyway.
3. If you have connecting flights, it takes the first stopover as the destination for the day - for example. I am flying MEL-PER-SIN-BOM tomorrow. If I check tripit when I get to Mumbai, it will say that I am in Perth!
4. The Business groups feature is seriously broken - I am in a company based group with 967 members. If I look at the Business tab - map or leaderboard, I see records indicating anything from 7 to 600 people on the leaderboard - and it fluctuates daily. The default privacy option is to share your totals (miles are only calculated if you put in your home address) - I seriously doubt that my company colleagues are making daily changes randomly to their tripit privacy settings, so the problem must be with tripit.
5. The iCal feed is down (and has been for nearly a month) - they know about the problem, but still have not fixed the problem. This is the main feature of triptit that I like - it enables me to get all my flight and hotel details into my Lotus Notes calendar which then syncs onto my phone - I have a consistent calendar on my laptop, phone and online with all my travel details in every place.
6. When you do report a problem, they do not bother to investigate properly - they make an assumption without reading the detail and respond in that way - it's like they have a SLA target to meet for closing problem reports down and they'll take any shortcut to close a call quickly.

 

[drewbles]

Re: Thoughts on TripIt Pro

I have so many issues with the free service that I refuse to buy the pro service - from my point of view, if they can't get their base capability right, then how can I trust that the pro service wont also be busted?

Some issues I have (all raised previously with tripit support):

1. Milage calculations are way off - they have some bizarre calculation method based around distance from your home address rather than actual flight distances (eg. Tript says I have done 303,862km this year, but on flightmemory.com, it is 344,052km - thats 12% discrepancy - but at the end of last year, it was nearly 20% discrepancy)
2. Everything is based on US West coast time - updates to my current location don't occur until that date on the US West coast - as we're on the other side of the date line, it takes the better part of a day for my location to be updated, by which time it may be wrong anyway.
3. If you have connecting flights, it takes the first stopover as the destination for the day - for example. I am flying MEL-PER-SIN-BOM tomorrow. If I check tripit when I get to Mumbai, it will say that I am in Perth!
4. The Business groups feature is seriously broken - I am in a company based group with 967 members. If I look at the Business tab - map or leaderboard, I see records indicating anything from 7 to 600 people on the leaderboard - and it fluctuates daily. The default privacy option is to share your totals (miles are only calculated if you put in your home address) - I seriously doubt that my company colleagues are making daily changes randomly to their tripit privacy settings, so the problem must be with tripit.
5. The iCal feed is down (and has been for nearly a month) - they know about the problem, but still have not fixed the problem. This is the main feature of triptit that I like - it enables me to get all my flight and hotel details into my Lotus Notes calendar which then syncs onto my phone - I have a consistent calendar on my laptop, phone and online with all my travel details in every place.
6. When you do report a problem, they do not bother to investigate properly - they make an assumption without reading the detail and respond in that way - it's like they have a SLA target to meet for closing problem reports down and they'll take any shortcut to close a call quickly.

1. I don't use it for mileage calculations so I can't comment on that.
2. You can change the time zone preferences in your TripIt settings AFAIK. I am a Pro subscriber, and my Calendar feed is all correct (I just set my Calendar to have it understand timezones properly and it displays correctly for whatever timezone i'm using in my calendar at the time, this is on a mac).
3. How long is your layover? I believe you can set some kind of time limit before it thinks it's more than a transit stop. I use it frequently and have not seen this behaviour for any kind of layover under 4 hours.
4. Not used the business functionality
5. Down? Mine's working perfectly (was working on OS X 10.6 great last week, and I am on 10.8 now and Calendar is working fine (as it is on my iPad and iPhone also). Suggest you delete your feed and re-import it from the website to clear it up
6. I've had nothing but great feedback from them and their support team. I've had them respond quickly with requests for more information as well as updates to faults.

It sounds like you're having bad luck with them. I'm a big supporter of them (not affiliated, just a very happy user). I email all my itineraries to them and it 'just works' for 99% of my stuff. My only complaint, and it's a small one, is that if you have say a 7am flight, it'll display the flight and then the hotel check-out for the destination you're leaving after you arrive in your destination (say you're in MEL, checking out of the HSW and flying to SYD, you see QF400 at 0600, then Arrive SYD 0720, and the hotel check out from HSW would come up after at around 10am). They need some smarts built in to realise if you're departing a hotel for another flight, you're going to be checking out prior.

In all, TripIt Pro is *very* US centric as others have said. I do also get very very detailed updates from DJ/VA with it now (gate changes, delays etc). I also have had good success of late with QF and connections when doing runs around the place. In the USA it's brilliant. It'll tell you how long you have to make a connection, the gate of the connection and all that kind of thing, If you have luggage it also will advise what carousel your bag should be arriving on. It's brilliant for mileage runners

 

[dot]

Re: Thoughts on TripIt Pro

1. I don't use it for mileage calculations so I can't comment on that.
2. You can change the time zone preferences in your TripIt settings AFAIK. I am a Pro subscriber, and my Calendar feed is all correct (I just set my Calendar to have it understand timezones properly and it displays correctly for whatever timezone i'm using in my calendar at the time, this is on a mac).
3. How long is your layover? I believe you can set some kind of time limit before it thinks it's more than a transit stop. I use it frequently and have not seen this behaviour for any kind of layover under 4 hours.
4. Not used the business functionality
5. Down? Mine's working perfectly (was working on OS X 10.6 great last week, and I am on 10.8 now and Calendar is working fine (as it is on my iPad and iPhone also). Suggest you delete your feed and re-import it from the website to clear it up
6. I've had nothing but great feedback from them and their support team. I've had them respond quickly with requests for more information as well as updates to faults.

It sounds like you're having bad luck with them. I'm a big supporter of them (not affiliated, just a very happy user). I email all my itineraries to them and it 'just works' for 99% of my stuff. My only complaint, and it's a small one, is that if you have say a 7am flight, it'll display the flight and then the hotel check-out for the destination you're leaving after you arrive in your destination (say you're in MEL, checking out of the HSW and flying to SYD, you see QF400 at 0600, then Arrive SYD 0720, and the hotel check out from HSW would come up after at around 10am). They need some smarts built in to realise if you're departing a hotel for another flight, you're going to be checking out prior.

In all, TripIt Pro is *very* US centric as others have said. I do also get very very detailed updates from DJ/VA with it now (gate changes, delays etc). I also have had good success of late with QF and connections when doing runs around the place. In the USA it's brilliant. It'll tell you how long you have to make a connection, the gate of the connection and all that kind of thing, If you have luggage it also will advise what carousel your bag should be arriving on. It's brilliant for mileage runners

Hey drewbles,
thanks for the response. I think I need to clarify a couple of things:
2. The timezone issue - this is not on my devices or laptop, but rather on their web site - on returning home, it wont get updated ont he web sitre until the following day to say I am at home. Similarly, updates to Facebook say I am returning home a day after I have arrived home. Unless I fly direct (to avoid issue 3) and am at a location for a number of days, the location tripit list me at is often out of date - If I am at one location for (say) 5 days, it will catch up and show me at that location, but for a trip like I have planned over the next weeks (mel-per-sin-bom/bom-jnb/jnb-add-ruh/ruh-hkg-mel) once I leave JNB (where I will be for 6 days) it won't catch up with my real location until after 8pm the day after I arrive home - that's also when my milage will be updated btw. I do not see any timezome preferences in my profile on the tripit web site.
3. Stopovers could be as short a 1 hour or as long as 8 hours, it doesnt seem to make a differnce to the behaviour I see. there is no setting for this in my profile (in the free version).
5. When I logged the call, the response I got back from them was "Sorry for any inconvenience. We are aware of problems and investigating issues with the calendar sync/feed. You can stay posted here: http://help.tripit.com/entries/20299618" - the issue is dated 20Aug, although I first saw it a number of days earlier. Recreating the iCal feed was the first thing that I did becore contacting Tripit - to no avail. Obviously, this issue is affecting other users as well.

If you have the settings in your profile, can you grap a screenshot of them for me please?

 

[drewbles]

Re: Thoughts on TripIt Pro

Wow sounds like their support has gone down the tubes

I'm not familiar with the 'post to facebook' stuff as I despise that kind of thing (I'd rather just upload a photo of where I am). I do have some people in my 'inner circle' so they know where I am at all times in case of an emergency though.

There's most likely some kind of time zone issue with the way it posts to facebook. It would make sense then I haven't seen it as I don't use those features (and when i'm back from a trip, I don't really login to check its expired). The only time I use the website is to update to my US Cell phone number when i'm there, and to update the check-in/check-out times for hotels prior to trips. The rest is taken care of by the Mobile app (that now supports push notifications for pro subscribers) and my Calendars.

They were bought out not so long ago, so it wouldn't surprise me if the first thing they did to cut costs was cut support

 

[Danger]

Re: Thoughts on TripIt Pro

I've put in a two sector DJ flight and Tripit is telling me they're "not monitored" because they're "missing key info". But I don't know what's missing. I forwarded the confirmation email and it all appears to have upload into the system fine. It's got the airports, time, aircraft, duration, passenger . . . Any ideas what might be missing?

 

[drewbles]

Re: Thoughts on TripIt Pro

I've put in a two sector DJ flight and Tripit is telling me they're "not monitored" because they're "missing key info". But I don't know what's missing. I forwarded the confirmation email and it all appears to have upload into the system fine. It's got the airports, time, aircraft, duration, passenger . . . Any ideas what might be missing?

Are you Pro? It's only monitored under Pro (all my DJ flights are being monitored ok at this stage..)

 

[Mal]

Also doesn't get monitored until a certain time before flights apparently. But my smses and push notifications have been relatively fine for DJ. I note that it doesn't really like ex per flights tho.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using AustFreqFly

 

[Danger]

Re: Thoughts on TripIt Pro

Are you Pro? It's only monitored under Pro (all my DJ flights are being monitored ok at this stage..)

Yep. The USD50 a year or thereabouts.

Also doesn't get monitored until a certain time before flights apparently. But my smses and push notifications have been relatively fine for DJ. I note that it doesn't really like ex per flights tho.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using AustFreqFly

I got no email or text message at four hour prior to departure mark, nor connecting flight information.

 

[serfty]

Re: Keeping track of all your flights....

I use tripit and not the pro version. I think its great , just email my itinerary to them then it shows up on all my calendars too.

Tripit can also link to other apps too like flightaware and numerous others.

I tried the Pro version last November - it would have had me missing a flight if I had believed it. So I did not think it worth forking out. Other than that I have used tripit for a few years.

 

[nlagalle]

Re: Keeping track of all your flights....

I tried the Pro version last November - it would have had me missing a flight if I had believed it. So I did not think it worth forking out. Other than that I have used tripit for a few years.

What was telling you? I've used the pro version for some time now, and it's always been right. In fact it informed me my flight was cancelled during the ash cloud before Qantas did!

 

[serfty]

Re: Keeping track of all your flights....

What was telling you? ...

From what I can tell, it was a Flightstats failure as it's information at the time matched tripits - but since I can review these myself anyway I cancelled my pro subscription. I still find the free version to be useful.

Here's my feedback:

serfty, Nov 20 03:42 pm (PST): Hi,

I have subscribed to a trial of TripIt Pro, but am considering cancelling this before the fee becomes payable.

The main reason is your email information could have had me offloaded from a flight if I had not used alternate sources.

The flight in question was AA1299 on Sat, Nov 3rd, 2012, scheduled 6:40pm from MIA to SJU.

This was delayed and trip-it pro emailed me to advise it was to depart at 8:27pm. I checked with AA.com to find it was indeed delayed but was to depart at 7:00pm from an E gate.

I referred to the AA service desk at MIA and Flightaware.com, both confirming this information. Tripit was still indicating 8:27pm and so was Flightstats.

I was boarding the aircraft from gate (E9) when I received two emails from TripitPro still indicting the wrong gate (D2) and the wrong time (8:27pm).

I was in my seat waiting to depart when finally Tripit send the correct information: "Pull-in for AA 1299". Given that Gate D2 and E9 gates are over 1000 yards apart at MIA, this information would have been far too late.

Given the above, are you able to advise whether such may occur in the future - I don't need to spend money on something I can get more reliably elsewhere.

Regards,

serfty.

... and their polite response:

<respondent>, Nov 21 11:23 am (PST):
Hi serfty,

Thank you for contacting us and our apologies for any inconvenience. In reviewing our records show that while we did receive information from our monitoring service on your flight we were not notified of the final state which resulted in the inaccurate alert. Unfortunately because this is a past flight I cannot verify exactly what may have happened but we did send you alerts which seemed to be inacurate.

We can only report what's published by our monitoring service. That service draws upon various sources, not just the airlines, for our travel alerts. In nearly all cases this means a better experience for our customers since we can get the most accurate alerts to them as quickly as possible (not so in your case which is unfortunate).

Please keep us posted about any alerts anomalies in the future. It's important for us to track feedback on incidents such as yours and to report it to our monitoring service in order to create the best user experience possible. Thank you.

Best Regards,
...

 

[serfty]

Re: Tips for Less Miserable Flights

...

Wrong - if you have TripIt pro (and probably other apps). TripIt ALWAYS gets in first, via text to my phone, with gate changes / delays in flights etc. Airport flight status boards are useless, as I think most of us know.

I used the free trial of trip it pro once and if I had relied on it I world have missed a flight at MIA.

I still use the free subscription to Tripit though.

 

[SamR]

Re: Thoughts on TripIt Pro

I'm trying to set up a set up a tracker alert (I'm a pro subscriber). I'm flying in J and am trying to track better seats in J, but it won't let me. I can set alerts for seats in Y, Y+ and F, but not in the class I'm actually flying! is this a known issue, or am I missing something?