Fare Locker Warning

I enquired about a flight on Thursday 1 PM. G out, K back combo fare. Nice lady put a hold on for 24h and said if I wanted longer I'd need to pay for fare locker.

With this in mind I phoned back today and spoke to agent number 2 who made a couple of minor changes within the booking and took my 20 quid for fare locker. I was told I'd have 7 days (until 4/4 23:39) to make my mind up and book or lose it.

I got the email a couple of hours later with 4th April on it. All good so far.

Upon reading the email I see:

5. Duration of the Fare Lock is the shorter of 3 days or to the last ticket date set by the ticketing time limit in the fare rules (which decreases as the departure date approaches

Uh oh!

I phone VS UC desk who then tell me that I've actually only got until 2PM on the 31st and the fare locker is 72hrs from my original request (this makes sense as the clocks go forward Sun AM).

It's lucky I actually read all the T/Cs as I probably wouldn't have phoned before Sunday and could well have lost the two Gs for my wedding trip.

At least now I know we have to decide if we want the flights by Sunday, but it's yet another cock up by VS staff that could quite easily go very pear shaped, especially if I'd paid for hotels using non-refundable offers thinking that I could do the flights later in the week.

I'm letting people on here know this as I wouldn't want anyone to get caught out like I nearly did.

the website says 7 days

5. Duration of the Fare Lock is the shorter of 7 days or to the last ticket date set by the ticketing time limit in the fare rules (which decreases as the departure date approaches

Penny, thanks for that. I may call them again tomorrow. What a mess.

Hold up, they are marketing this as a hold for 7 days and then they put in that caveat about the lesser of 7 days or ticket issue dates being reached... sneaky sods