Airline ticket reservation

This is going to be a long post but I think I need to put down things which you need to take care of when you book a ticket online. These are especially required with some rogue travel sites around x-(

• Ask the agent to charge your credit card when you are booking the ticket. Do not allow them to delay the charging. They might and will often try and delay it as long as possible to see if some other passenger is trying to get the ticket for the same date and then sell it to him at a higher price. Your reservation will not hold since their clause states that if fare increases between the time of booking to the actual payment time you have to pay the difference. Often you will end up paying more or if you decline to pay more they will ask you to cancel the ticket and pay the standard cancellation charges. Either way you lose.
• If at all you are booking using phone, make absolutely sure that they enter your name details as they are on your passport. Indian passports, atleast the old ones, did not have a middle name field. So be sure to put your firstname and middlename together. Although this has not caused me any actual problems (like not being allowed to board), I have gone through the experience of having my middle name being put in the middle name field and then spending countless hours on the phone trying to get it changed. Guess what ? A name change requires you to pay some fees.
• This is more of common sense: Check the travel dates. mm/dd/yy for people used to dd/mm/yy may cause some problems.
• Look for deals online. You do get good discounts sometimes.