Business class websites

The consensus on this forum seems to be:
AVOID THEM LIKE THE PLAGUE

Not to say Everyone of them is a scam, but to quote Milton Friedman "There is no such thing as a free lunch"

Never never never buy airlines tickets from a third party vendor. If a flight gets canceled/changed, neither the airline nor the vendor will help you.
Did I say never enough?

Set up Google Flights price Alerts, and research price history on this site. Always buy directly from the airlines.
Good luck!

There are a couple of options and none of them are good. One is that they’re selling mileage tickets. So they find somebody like me who has a lot of frequent flyer miles and they get me to book your ticket and they give me the cash. Of course, when the airline finds out, and they quite often do, you will be stranded. So the fact that you got to Europe on this ticket and didn’t know that it was a mileage ticket, didn’t know you were breaking the ticket terms doesn’t matter -you’ll be at Europe without a way home

Second model- they will come back and tell you that while they told you they could get the ticket for $2500 they need a few more hundred dollars and they just keep doing that until you paid more then you would’ve if you paid through the airline directly, but of course they’ve got your credit card and your cash so you keep thinking you need to give them more money.

And of course, the third model is the Kiwi model. They find a cheap airfare business class airfare on Icelandic out of Newark, but you live in Atlanta. So they cobble together this flight for you from Atlanta to JFK and then an hour later you fly from Newark to Iceland and on to Europe. What could possibly go wrong with that?

The days of airlines needing to use brokers to sell business class tickets that business travelers weren’t buying disappeared with the Internet. There is no cheap airfare fairy. she’s a myth. She’s even less real than the Easter bunny.

You said "business class websites" which isn't very specific, but the question is asked here regularly, so I'm assuming you are referring to websites claiming to offer "discount" business class tickets, often using deliberately misleading terms like "consolidator" or "bucket shop" or similar BS.

Not to say Everyone of them is a scam...

Well, then I'll say it.

Yes, every one of "them" is absolutely a scam, a fraud, a con, a sham, a flim-flam.

There simply are no third-party "discount" agents reselling legitimate business class tickets for any airline. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. They don't exist - because airlines do not do this. Ever. "There is no business class ticket fairy" - a phrase coined by another longtime member and savvy traveler here (I see it's Carol, directly above! - as we cross-posted at the same time).

What definitely does exist though, are scammy online "services" selling fraudulently obtained tickets, including business class tickets. These are tickets booked by these scammers in your name, paid for with someone else's frequent flyer miles. There is a thriving black market in buying and selling frequent flyer miles, all of which very clearly violate the airlines' rules.

The airlines take a very dim view of this practice - they regard it as fraud - and if they catch you, your ticket will be declared invalid, and you will be denied boarding, with no recourse. It's easy for the airlines to see whose frequent flyer miles were used to book your ticket - anyone with access to their systems (customer service reps, gate agents, flight attendants, etc., all can see such details) and they can and do raise questions about your relationship to that person (someone with a different name and address, often someone from a different country).

If you see any website purporting to sell "discounted" business class tickets, before you bite the hook, go do a search at the Better Business Bureau for them, and prepare for some colorful language used in the complaints.

There's no Easter Bunny? :(

There is a thriving black market in buying and selling frequent flyer miles

care to hook a brotha up? I've got 157 miles on Continental air & want to let them go. ;-))

The only time you'll get a legitimate discount on business class seats is when the airline is running a sale.

care to hook a brotha up? I've got 157 miles on Continental air & want to let them go. ;-))

I’ll donate some Eastern miles and you can sell all of them together

it can be summarized in one word, "Not".

I can pony up some U.S. Airways miles for your pool. ("U.S. Scare" LOL)

I just saw an online posting about this today, their recommendation is to buy an economy (or premium econ) ticket that will allow for upgrades and then ... wait for the airline to start dangling upgrades. Which they are sure to do but not necessarily at a good price. Wait and see what the numbers are doing, sometimes it's a steal.

If the plane's not full prior to takeoff they might start making offers at the ticket counter, they did that on my Lufthansa flight back to the States and I was pretty tempted. The catch there was, lots of people in economy lined up and said Hey I'll take it, but it was only being offered to people in premium econ. It sold out pretty quickly.

So I’m on a frequent flyer group for Delta Airlines and they have the same theory you buy a cheaper seat and you get a good upgrade offer. But it doesn’t always work

I’ve been tracking an upcoming flight from London. I did buy a premium economy because that’s what my company will pay for. The cheapest upgrade offer has been $1500. Had I bought business class at the beginning the total would’ve been about $3000 round-trip if I add this $1500 upgrade onto my cheaper airfare I’m only at about $3600. So my mythical savings are a - negative $500. Hmmm.,.

Now I will be honest. The reason I’m not tracking it going to London is I bought the premium economy ticket and submitted that to expense report and then I credited that ticket and bought a ticket to London in business class and returning in premium economy. That cost me $500. I don’t think the upgrade offer was ever going to be less than $500. (and for anyone who is now planning to tell me what I did was wrong. My company knows what I did and they could care less. Actually, they would let me buy the business class ticket and just tell them what the premium economy cost but as an accountant, I feel like that’s not ethical so I do it this way so they have it exact receipt and know that I didn’t make things up.)