Woman narrowly avoided paying £23.7bn for two return flights from Birmingham to Portugal

A would-be holidaymaker has spoken of her shock after an online travel agency almost charged her £23.7bn for two return flights to Portugal. Marion Sessions, who owns and runs two holiday cottages in Derbyshire with her husband, was about to click 'proceed' on the eDreams website for flights from Birmingham to Faro for them when she noticed the return baggage check-in cost.



She said: "I tried to book cheap flights for a weekend trip to stay with some good friends. I Googled 'cheap flights to Faro', found eDreams ('Great Trips at Great Prices' is their slogan) were offering the best, with Ryanair and Monarch Airlines, at a cost for the two of us of £164.07. I duly booked and fortunately was alert enough to realise - before clicking 'confirm' that the final cost was the truly - as advertised - great price of £23,659,382,125.95!!!"

"Don't think our current account would have run to it this month..." Mrs Sessions, who has written a blog on her experience, added: "I thought i must have made a mistake. "I couldn't believe my eyes but it was so lucky I noticed the final price. "I shudder to think what may have happened had I agreed... I tried to contact them but there was an out-of-hours message." A spokeswoman for Spain-based eDreams said: "eDreams would like to apologise to Mrs Sessions for any inconvenience caused.



"We are continuing to investigate, however it appears to be an isolated incident that we have been unable to replicate. If it is a bug, we will find it and make every effort to fix it immediately. eDreams would like to re-iterate that at no point was there any attempt to make this purchase. We would also like to provide the added re-assurance that any attempt at a transaction of this size would automatically be rejected by our systems and unable to proceed." Neither Ryanair nor Monarch are responsible for eDreams' pricing or booking processes.