Mistake fares make frequent flyers feel like kids in a candy store (David Blackwell / Flickr)
In a widely publicized case, United posted several unbelievably cheap fares on its website yesterday due to a currency conversion error.
How cheap? How about $74 to fly between New York and London…in business class?
A fare like that is clearly a mistake and not just a super low fare.
Once the mistake was uncovered, word quickly spread through social media, and thousands of tickets were booked and ticketed on United.com.
You can change your country of purchase in the upper right side of United’s web site.
To book the mistake fare on United.com, users had to lie about the country from which they were booking the tickets (switching from the US to Denmark), which then mis-priced the fares due to a currency conversion glitch. (See image above to see how you can change this.)
Once it realized its mistake, United contacted the ticket holders and told them that their tickets would be voided and that payment would not be processed.
Then the squawking began.
Trip Report: JetBlue Mint class [photos]
Should United (or any other airline) be forced to honor these mistake fares that pop up from time to time?
No, I do not think so.
As much as we love to jump on the airlines for their greed, and our desire to “get back at them,” we need to remember that they are run by human beings…and that human beings make mistakes.
Human beings are generally willing to forgive mistakes, right?
Let’s consider a “kid in the candy” store analogy– admittedly imperfect, but I think you’ll get my drift:
Photo: Anthony Easton / Flickr
A kid walks into the Mom & Pop candy store and discovers that Mom has mistakenly priced $1 chocolate bars at just 10 cents. He buys three and then runs into the street to tell all his friends about Mom’s mistake.
The kids rush the store– before mom has had the time to get her price gun out to properly price the candy bars.
They grab all the chocolate bars and demand that she sell them for 10 cents as marked.
When mom says, “sorry kids, I made a mistake and can’t sell these to you for just 10 cents, you have to pay the correct price,” they all squeal and moan and leave the store.
Would it be fair to force mom to sell the kids that candy at the wrong price?
I don’t think so. She might choose to sell them at that price anyway as a goodwill gesture, but I don’t think that she must make good on her mistake.
Plus, I think it’s unethical for the kid to run into the street screaming about Mom’s mistake. It’s equally unethical for the kids in the street, who know that this is a mistake, to rush the store demanding their 90% off candy.
Do you agree? I bet not… especially when I look at the results from an NPR poll taken in December 2013. It was part of a story about mistake fares from Delta titled: The Price Is Wrong And You Know It: Do You Buy That Ticket?
The DOT is apparently investigating this whole affair, but in the meantime, I’d love to hear your comments about mistake fares! Please leave them below.
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Others have already pointed out that your analogy is obviously terrible. Nobody in the world thinks that United, upon noticing its mistake, had a moral obligation to keep offering the mistaken prices to others. The mother in your story can stop selling more candy bars for 10 cents, but clearly can’t go raid the homes of those who already bought them to snatch them back.
The real question here is, the analogy is /so/ obviously terrible that it’s hard to seriously imagine that you wouldn’t have realized that when you made it. So, why would someone make a transparently terrible analogy to exculpate a large powerful company like United? Probably only if one had some ulterior motives in doing so. Chris McGinnis, are you simply letting all those free first class trial flights get to you, or is something even more sinister going on?
I for one screwed up last year, I had the wrong week, booked and paid for the ticket. Remember being tickle pink that I got such a great fare when I knew the PGA Championship was in town and that prices for flying to Louisville would be expensive. It wasn’t until I tried to book the hotel and I wasn’t able to get my contract rate that I found out it was the wrong week.
Panic hit me thinking that I was going to lose the $350 I paid United. Called and that is when I found out that you have 24 hour grace period on tickets, United refunded every penny of my ticket.
Enough talking about how good United was, back to how much I really hate that airline.
Well, yes, if you contact them within 24 hours, you can absolutely void your ticket and get a full refund and then book for the days you want.
I’m pretty confident this whole scenario we’re reading about came and went within 24 hours, so it’s an apt comparison.
The reason everyone hates United starts at the top. Its policies reflect a “Screw the customer” attitude, and while I’ve never worked at United, I am pretty sure that it treats most of its employees like crap and that is why they treat customers the way they do.
So I’m sure the airlines occasionally make a mistake in the other direction and post an incorrectly high fare for ticket(s), and then they discover that they had sold some at the higher price. Do you think in those cases that the airlines contact the passengers, inform them of the errors, and refund them the difference? If United, in this case, wants to not go forward with the transactions, then I would at least like a sworn statement to the FAA from a very high ranking United officer that they have never overcharged and not refunded. Alternatively, they could provide some evidence of where they did issue a refund after they discovered their error. Anyone out there ever get a “we overcharged you accidentally” letter?
I agree with you ethically, However, business-wise, it’s United’s fault that everyone feels ill will toward them and wants to stick it to them. Make a mistake, that will be $200 to change. Want to move up to an empty seat on an earlier same day flight, that will be $200 plus a difference in fare-even though the seat is empty. Your suitcase is one pound too heavy–that’s $100. Who exactly is screwing who?
Chris you are right on here. The opportunists are circling, it really is annoying to me to see the vultures here. By the way, consumers get 24 hours to cancel or rebook fares, airlines should too in errors as obvious as this.
I suspect that if “United pays for its mistakes” we in the future will be the real ones paying.
I think United should pay for its mistake.
Lying about your location is nothing new. If you live in the U.S. and go to certain web sites for European trains, as soon as you enter U.S. as your home country you are automatically redirected to a special site that resells tickets with huge markups. It’s a secret trick to claim that you live in Antarctica or Afghanistan before starting your search so you can bypass these rip-off middleman sites.
Yes, but my secretary booked the tickets for me and she didn’t notice the billing country field (which is pre-filled when you arrive at the checkout page). A 3rd party mistake, right?
United should carry insurance for these types of mistakes.
Also, why do any of us owe United the truth about which country we are buying the ticket from? Giving United the ability to price discriminate only helps United, which already occupies a far superior bargaining position.
You use the wrong analogy. Completely. United is canceling tickets it already sold. The candy store owner is simply refusing to sell future candy at the lower price. She is not clawing back the candy she already sold.
I would have more sympathy for the “humans” at United if they had more sympathy for us when we make mistakes. United has no blanket policy of waiving change fees when one of its customers makes a mistake. I’m really surprised this is your point of view.
Just remember, United lied about where it was located to avoid paying tens of millions in taxes. United set the precedent here, not anyone else. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/united-airlines-sham-office-saves-carrier-tens-of-millions-on-fuel-taxes-lawsuit/
Chris, great article. But your getting soft here! 🙂 Please update once the DOT is done with its investigation/lawsuits are settled. These things are interesting.
I agree 100%.
Exactly!!
Plus, I believe that it is the LAW that if you advertise a price you must honor it, mistake or not. The difference here though is that people had to deceptively state they were purchasing the tickets in Denmark. Otherwise, it would be a simple case that United looses.
The way I like to think about ethical dilemmas like these is to consider what I was taught about such things as a child. Perhaps it’s different today but five decades ago my parent’s would have patiently explained that it’s wrong to take advantage of a mistake like this. United’s behavior toward its customers is irrelevant, because as most of us were also taught, two wrongs don’t make a right.
Another way to think about this is as follows: Suppose United made a similar mistake for all of the seats in its inventory. Forcing the company to honor the tickets would put it out of business. That might be quite satisfying for customers who have an axe to grind with United but the pleasure of sticking it to them in the short term would be more than cancelled out by the long-term pain of higher air fares that would result from putting one of the few remaining airlines out of business.
So, if I make a mistake and book the wrong dates for my trip and notice a few days after I book, all I have to do is tell the airline I made a mistake and the airline will change my dates for free, right?
As much as I hate United, have to agree that if someone had to lie about were they lived, United shouldn’t have to honor those fares.
But those blatant errors that come up now and then they shoud pay for those.
Well, the problem is that according to EU consumer protection laws, merchants cannot discriminate EU customers based on their country of origin/residence/nationality. So all EU customers who purchased the tickets are on an equal footing with everyone from DK, because by changing the billing country to DK, they only exercised their right to be able to purchase goods/services at the same price as other citizens of the EU (this time, namely those with Danish credit cards)
If a mistake fare doesn’t involve lying on the buyers’ part then the airline should honor it, but that is not the case for the US citizens here.
Hey Sean and thanks for your comment: The way I see it is that just one kid got to keep the candy bar. Not all of em! –chris
I don’t like your example but I agree with you. The only fares United should be honoring are the Danes who bought tickets. Not the unethical peeps who lied which country they were from.
your analogy makes no sense. in that case, the kid got to keep the candy bar. in this case, we did not get to keep the candy bar that we bought (the flight). nice try though !