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This morning I got an email from Delta Air Lines offering me a fat $500 credit for a future Delta flight if I book a round trip “Business Elite” ticket between San Francisco and New York.
The same email offered a $200 credit if I book an expensive full-coach round trip on the same route.
(Here’s a link to the offer from Delta)
That’s a huge incentive for me to book Delta. It’s also a huge incentive for me to book its most expensive fares between SFO and New York. Here’s what I mean by expensive:
- Mid-February round trip Business Elite fares between SFO and JFK are currently $2265. (Here’s a video that shows what Delta’s Business Elite looks like.)
- Full-coach (Y, B or M) round trip fares range from $1000 to $2200.
The cheapest round trip coach fare (T) is just $250.
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Let’s say I take Delta up on its offer and spend thousands on a ticket instead of just $250.
After the trip, I submit my expenses to my company or to my client and get reimbursed.
Then Delta sends me the $200 or $500 credit good for any flight through June 15, 2010.
To whom does that credit belong?
Me? I’d love to use it on a fare to Hawaii this spring.
Or does it belong to my company or my client? I’m sure they’d appreciate an extra $500 discount on my next business trip.
To help me with this ethical dilemma, I called on Henry Harteveldt, the principal travel analyst at Forrester Research here in San Francisco.
He said, “A company could legitimately claim that if it paid for a fare that qualifies for the rebate, then the credit should go to the company. However, the credit may be issued in the name of the traveler– and the credit is non-transferable. A company could mandate that if an employee uses company funds to buy a ticket that qualifies for the credit, that the credit should be used to defray the cost of any future company-paid travel for that employee.”
But, he concedes, “I don’t know whether corporate travel departments are equipped to monitor this. Clearly there is an issue of trust involved.”
Caleb Tiller, a spokesperson for the National Business Travel Association, a trade group that represents the interests of corporate travel managers, says that the question about who owns the credit is moot at companies with strong managed travel programs. He says, “Effective travel policies generally dictate that travelers either use a preferred carrier or purchase the lowest logical fare.”
That’s true at many large corporations that can afford to have staffers and agencies manage travel-buying decisions.
But there’s still a lot of leeway at smaller companies.
What would YOU do with the credit? What’s the RIGHT thing to do? I’d be very interested to hear your comments!
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Sent to me via email from reader MB:
I know my company has a policy that says frequent flier miles belong to the flyer. It doesn’t address the credit. The real dilemma in my mind, if you assume for a moment that the traveler is legitimately entitled to it by virtue of company policy, is whether to spend more of the companies money just to get a personal perk. That is unethical, and if it is “close”, one could build a thousand justifications. But with that big of a discrepancy, it is clearly abusive, in my opinion.
That isn’t much different than the recent United offer I got to give me my 1K status I lost this year if I fly 5000 miles in 90 days. The fine print says it has to be in Y or B class or better (a few more details than this), and when you look at the fare difference it is obscene. I just went to Chicago and Austin on United for $800. The qualifying fare to get the status would have been well over $3000 and I would have still been a little shy of the 5000 miles.