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United Not Flying People From San Francisco To Paris For $25

from the c'est-la-vie dept

Fri, Feb 16th 2001 1:15am — Mike Masnick

A few weeks back, United Airlines accidentally posted flight costs from San Francisco to Paris for approximately $25. They were up for almost an hour and over a hundred people snapped up the cheap flights. Now United has told them they won't honor the tickets - which is entirely reasonable. And, yet, some people still complain. It was obviously a mistake, and anyone ordering the tickets must have known that. To complain now is just being childish.

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4 Comments

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Col. Klink (profile), 16 Feb 2001 @ 10:39am

Bait and Switch
What if someone honestly believed that United was selling tickets at that price? Airlines have been known to sell seats at a cost (frequent fliers, kill competitors, because you got bumped, etc). So someone buys the ticket and then makes their hotel and car reservation, only to be suddenly told to cough up a lot more money.

Others have made pricing mistakes in the past (Palm Vs for under $200; 19" monitors at 1/10th the cost). In both of these cases, the merchants made a reasonable attempt to honor their prices. They would only honor one order from each customer and they would only sell their current stock. They lost money, but they won on good will and image.

Not only are those customers mad at United, but so am I. If I see what I think is a cheap fare from United, should I believe it? Do I have to worry that they'll change the deal after it was made?

What's to keep United from doing this intentionally? At least *some* of those screwed are likely to buy more expensive tickets from United or lose deposits on hotels and cars. This is a classic bait and switch, even if it wasn't intenional an United's part.
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plastik, 18 Feb 2001 @ 3:02pm

none
If they put it up on accident, its their faults. They had prices for 25$'s up there, and the person(s) that put it up there should be responsible and pay the 'price' for it. Sure, it could of been an honest mistake. But they made the mistake, not the consumers. We all pay for our mistakes right? yes, in one form or another. So should they, this form happens to be in the form of money. And whats 100 people anyways? It's not that many, only a few thousand dollars, they make FAR more than that in one day. Besides, what they did was false advertising, even if it was a mistakes, it was theirs. False advertising is against the law. Their lucky they don't have law suits on their hands. They should just give them the tickets just to prevent that. The loss would be far more than their gain. The fact of it is, they had a price up there, people bought that price, it was THEIR mistake, not the persons, they bought the tickets legit. They should be given their tickets, and the person that made the mistake delt with. It seems that these days, its more the consumers fault than the company's fault if the company makes a mistake. It's all bullshit.
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Mike (profile), 19 Feb 2001 @ 12:21am

Re: none
I don't think it's the consumer's fault... but let's face it: mistakes are made. Yes, the company should try to do *something* nice to make up for it, but I don't believe they should have to give away expensive tickets for $25 due to a mistake. There's simply no reason for that. The people who are complaining almost definitely knew they were scamming the airline, and I see no reason to give them what they want.

It's not false advertising because it was an honest mistake. It's not bait and switch because that's not what they were trying to do. It was just a mistake. Yes, if you can prove to me that the intent was to put up insanely cheap prices to lure people in and then tell them "no", that's a different story. But, in the case of an honest mistake, the people who bought the tickets should suck it up and deal with it.
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Bubba, 8 Jun 2009 @ 1:30pm

I wonder if the airlines would be willing to forgive my mistake if I booked the wrong day, or charge me a fee?
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