41–50 of 133 posts
I suggest that if anyone else finds themselves in Rich's situation then they call the airline prior to their first flight: Claim to be ill, tell them you'll make your own way down to LA in few days, and tell them you'll still need your return flight home. Sure, it's deceitful, but you have to play the game you're in..
Notice that a search for "Virgin" on this page yields zero results.
Being the David and being the Goliath involve completely different strategies.
*edit: HN trims the apostrophe from "World's". Manually add it if you want to visit the page.
I disagree. First, I'm very surprised that you were not aware of the policy that if you don't take the first part of an itinerary, you won't be able to catch up half-way. I guess it's something everyone learns very quickly. Second, your proposal that United should fix their prices is disingenuous. They would if it didn't mean bankruptcy for them. The reason they do that is that most of their income comes from busines…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because there is a very high correlation between missing the first leg and missing the second leg perhaps?
The main reason is really to try to maintain their market segmentation by prohibiting people from buying tickets other than exactly the ones they choose to fly. If they allowed this, it'd be impossible for them to charge more for one-way tickets than round-trip tickets, as many airlines do. Other prohibited things include: buying a one-stop "A->B->C" ticket and then getting off in B, because you really wanted to go A…
Burning the return leg of a roundtrip is usually also totally penalty free.
Getting off at a stopover is much more borderline, and it's almost impossible to get your luggage checked only to the stopover destination.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
why would an airline cancel your flight if you skip part of it? didn't you outright buy the tickets in the first place?
Because there is a very high correlation between missing the first leg and missing the second leg perhaps?
A one way ticket nearly always costs more than half the amount of a round trip ticket. So to prevent people from using one half of a round trip, they cancel your entire ticket.
Even better: when Delta had a huge hub here in Cincinnati, they owned something like 80 - 90% of the flights at the airport. They jacked the prices up to the point this was the most expensive destination in the country. However flights out of the Dayton airport 50 miles away were $100s cheaper - including on Delta. And the Delta flight would connect in Cincinnati! When I asked what would happen if I just flew out of Cincinnati and ignored the Dayton - Cincy leg, I was told they would cancel the entire ticket. Same thinking as the first example.
A study at one point showed something like 1,500+ people a day were flying out of Dayton rather than Cincinnati because of the cost difference. While the lost jobs hurt when Delta merged with Northwest and pretty much moved their hub away, I was happy to see them go.
I stopped reading here: "I ended up skipping my the flight from SFO to LAX because a friend of mine was driving down the night before; I figured I would keep him company on the drive, and I would get to spend an extra night in LA." In my experience, that basically canceled his set of flights ,and he was no longer a customer. That's been my experience for at least 10 years of flying. I didn't read the rest of the arti…
I think a great deal of the success of ycombinator type companies, consists of people who have not yet accepted (or refuse to accept) that poor customer experience should be the norm. Mint arose from a team that realized they could do better than Intuit. Google came about _even when it was clear to everyone_ that search was a solved problem, with little reason for new entrants - except for the fact that search results were crappy.
The Meta-Meta lesson here is that one way of deciding what to do for a new business, is look for through your daily experience of disappointments, and poor customer service, and ask yourself "How could I make the pain go away and get paid to do so."
So, Okay - I get it. Rich Aberman, is not the type of person to accept, as granted, a poor customer experience. I am. But, then again - one of us founded WePay, the other is an Enterprise Network Manager.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because there is a very high correlation between missing the first leg and missing the second leg perhaps?
The main reason is really to try to maintain their market segmentation by prohibiting people from buying tickets other than exactly the ones they choose to fly. If they allowed this, it'd be impossible for them to charge more for one-way tickets than round-trip tickets, as many airlines do. Other prohibited things include: buying a one-stop "A->B->C" ticket and then getting off in B, because you really wanted to go A…
A story I have is years ago at Continental. I came to the desk to check my suitcase. It was over some weight and so the lady said I had to pay, I believe $75. I had some swag in the bag that I could throwaway that would bring me under. Of course she makes me leave the line to throw it away, although there was a trash can not 15 feet away.
I get back in line, get to the desk and its her again. She weighs my bag... it's under the weight limit. Great! Wait, she still wants $75?! Huh? Apparently I just threw the items away, but the bag was originally weighed more than the limit and her claim was their policy was not to allow reweighings. And certain I've seen people do it before and I ask to see the policy. She says I have to contact customer service, but probably won't make my flight if I do -- and she's probably right on that point.
I'm pretty irate at this point, and ask to see the supervisor and she says she is. She says if I have a problem to take it up with the corporate office, or get out of line. I pay the $75, get on the plane, write a letter to Continental and never hear from them again.
To this day, I refuse to fly Continental.
I stopped reading here: "I ended up skipping my the flight from SFO to LAX because a friend of mine was driving down the night before; I figured I would keep him company on the drive, and I would get to spend an extra night in LA." In my experience, that basically canceled his set of flights ,and he was no longer a customer. That's been my experience for at least 10 years of flying. I didn't read the rest of the arti…
He bought the tickets, so how does not using them make him no longer a customer? If they gave him a refund (ha!), then yes... otherwise, no.
"after all, how much can you actually save by [skipping a flight]"? Many airlines have complicated pricing models that attempt to capture market demand. For example, I just looked up flights from Portland, ME to Los Angeles, departing on Jan 19 and returning Jan 26. If you take US and connect through Philadelphia, the cheapest price is $309. If you were to fly from Philadelphia to Los Angeles non-stop on that same da…
Flying internationally just amplifies this: was looking for tickets during the Christmas season and it was 50% cheaper to fly Brussels - Amsterdam - Kampala than Amsterdam - Kampala.