Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz • Hacker News Board

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#121

Post by bweitzman » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 4:14 PM UTC

hayksaakian wrote: post #5

This sounds absurd. This is the best analogy i've come up with: A Sandwich shop sells half sandwiches at 5$ and full sandwiches at 6$ You, and a friend would both like half a sandwich. Instead of ordering two separate halves. You order only 1 full sandwich and cut it in half yourself. Now the sandwich shop is suing you because you paid $6 for one sandwich, and only ate half of it. That's instead of paying 10$ for two…

The airlines aren't suing passengers though, they are suing Skiplagged. Whether or not you agree with the way that airlines charge for tickets, the ticket is a contract between the passenger and the airline and breaking that contract has consequences.

For the passenger, the contracts say that you are expected to use all legs of the tickets and if you do not then the rest of legs of the flights are voided. For the airlines, if they are unable to provide the flight they owe the passenger compensation.

There are no legal repercussions for the passenger not using all legs of the flights, but Skiplagged is clearly committing conspiracy to defraud and I would wager a fair sum of money that they will lose this case.

The issue with the Sandwich analogy is that there is no contract.

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#122

Post by rev_bird » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 4:19 PM UTC

jowiar wrote: post #21

hayksaakian wrote: post #5

This sounds absurd. This is the best analogy i've come up with: A Sandwich shop sells half sandwiches at 5$ and full sandwiches at 6$ You, and a friend would both like half a sandwich. Instead of ordering two separate halves. You order only 1 full sandwich and cut it in half yourself. Now the sandwich shop is suing you because you paid $6 for one sandwich, and only ate half of it. That's instead of paying 10$ for two…

The problem is that travel is a bit more complicated than sandwiches -- flight prices end up being set more by competition rather than cost of production. Let's say, per your model, you offering flights from SFO to PDX for $200, LAX to SFO for $100, and sell the LAX->PDX route for $250 (with a stopover in SFO). I decide to start an airline which doesn't fly to SFO, but offers direct flights from LAX->PDX for $190. Yo…

I've been all worked up about this story since I first read it, but yours is the first comment to make me actually understand a potential, non-bullshit argument from the airline side of things. Thank you.

That said, I think I'm still grumpy at the airlines for doing it. The basic issue they're trying to resolve is that they want the LAX-SFO-PDX flight to compete only with the other airlines' LAX-PDX direct flights, which justifies their weird pricing.

In reality, though, their LAX-SFO-PDX flight is also competing with their own LAX-SFO flights, because, unless they're locking people in the planes, they're equivalent products for anybody trying to get to SFO.

You're saying "You don't want to lose the business of people flying from LAX->PDX, but also don't want to alter your routes," which makes sense as a business. But as a consumer, it seems pretty screwed up that "I don't want to change my routes" is enough of a reason for businesses to sue people and businesses who take advantage of your refusal to fly where they want to go. It's using litigation instead of just flying to PDX.

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#123

Post by ElComradio » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 4:30 PM UTC

bweitzman wrote: post #121

hayksaakian wrote: post #5

This sounds absurd. This is the best analogy i've come up with: A Sandwich shop sells half sandwiches at 5$ and full sandwiches at 6$ You, and a friend would both like half a sandwich. Instead of ordering two separate halves. You order only 1 full sandwich and cut it in half yourself. Now the sandwich shop is suing you because you paid $6 for one sandwich, and only ate half of it. That's instead of paying 10$ for two…

The airlines aren't suing passengers though, they are suing Skiplagged. Whether or not you agree with the way that airlines charge for tickets, the ticket is a contract between the passenger and the airline and breaking that contract has consequences. For the passenger, the contracts say that you are expected to use all legs of the tickets and if you do not then the rest of legs of the flights are voided. For the air…

How can:

> the contracts say that you are expected to use all legs of the tickets

and

> There are no legal repercussions for the passenger not using all legs of the flights

both be true?

In other words, I as the customer have no obligation to use all legs of the flight. I did not promise the airline I would fly all the way to my destination (as far as I know); I do not promise that I even get on the flight at all. How can there be a conspiracy to defraud?

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#124

Post by ElComradio » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 4:31 PM UTC

brianbreslin wrote: post #116

Can someone give me some examples where this tool works out well? I live in a hub city (MIA) so I can't seem to find any results in their search (or is their site overloaded?)

ERI -> PHL -> NYC is half price of ERI -> PHL last time I looked.

Maybe the tool works best from smaller airports.

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#125

Post by cubano » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 4:37 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #15

justinsb wrote: post #2

Ignoring the merits of the lawsuit, I don't see how Skiplagged could ever be a big business. If it succeeds, it will result in its own destruction: the airlines will either eliminate hidden-city ticketing (i.e. reduce the 'hub premium') or otherwise prevent people from doing this (e.g. charge people extra if they don't complete their flight). I actually thought that airlines have always threatened to 'claw back' the…

Not every business needs to be big. If they make a profit on a flaw in the system and eventually leave the world a better place as they gracefully shut down operations, win-win.

If only businesses worked with this sort of mindset...we wouldn't be having near the wealth disparity and stagnant wage issues that are plaguing the world these days.

But, they absolutely do not think in these terms...it's "exploit every dollar possible and pay us at the top and our shareholders every penny we scrape, to hell with anyone not like us."

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#126

Post by joliv » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 4:37 PM UTC

Not sure how I feel about them asking for donations to their legal fund. They're a private business, not a charity.

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#127

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 4:43 PM UTC

I wonder how big of an impact such passengers have on environment. Imagine if half of the people who bought tickets on A->B->C flight decided to stay in B->C. They leave the airline in a position where they can't resell the empty seats, so the jet flies half-full while still using the pretty much the same amount of fuel (the impact of passengers is marginal). If you scale this behaviour up, an airline ends up flying 2x as many B->C flights as needed, thus literally wasting half of the fuel on that route.

I don't think it's very ethical to deliberately introduce inefficiencies to a system for personal gain, especially if it leads to wasting scarce resources. Being a responsible human being means caring about other things than just money.

Also, it's hard for me to feel compassion for passengers exploiting this trick - air travel is totally underpriced already, casual passengers pay much less than they should actually pay to cover the operating costs (not to mention externalities). People complain about algorithmic pricing, but that actually makes air travel affordable for a typical person, where a fixed pricing scheme would not.

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#128

Post by pimlottc » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 4:49 PM UTC

dsl wrote: post #59

pimlottc wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Isn't it usually considered a bad idea to be making lots of public statements like this during a pending lawsuit?

Lawyers usually don't give you advance warning that they are going to sue you.

The lawsuit was reported in mid-November [0]. The AMA refers to it in the opening post.

> Unfortunately, Skiplagged is now facing a lawsuit for making it too easy for consumers to save money. Ask me almost anything!

0: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-18/united-orbitz-sue-t...

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#129

Post by jamesaguilar » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 4:53 PM UTC

saryant wrote: post #111

jamesaguilar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder. Do you sign any agreement that prohibits hidden city routing when you buy the ticket? If so, on an ethical level, it's not the same as the sandwich buying scenario, where you are not signing any additional agreement. I wonder what I would do if I were the airline. Obviously the simplest thing would be to suspend the return ticket, but I suppose that the return ticket would typically be booked on a different…

Yes, you agree for both the fare rules of the specific ticket you bought and the airline's contract of carriage, both of which are approved by the Department of Transportation. And (at least) the CoC prohibits hidden-city ticketing.

Thanks! I could not find the contract on JetBlue's site when I went looking last night. But here is the contract for American Airlines.

http://www.aa.com/i18n/customerService/customerCommitment/co...

As you can see, hidden city routing is prohibited, and they retain the right to assess the difference between the ticket you actually used and what you paid if you engage in the practice.

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#130

Post by frandroid » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 5:09 PM UTC

domdip wrote: post #76

micampe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I'm sure the airlines and your fellow travelers would also prefer for you to not waste a seat. I know I would be pissed if I needed to take a flight but it was fully booked, and then found out that a dozen people already planned to not show up. I see this trick as not very respectful to other people.

Is there anything stopping a standby passenger from being given a seat on the second leg?

No, but standby seating is not really something people pursue anymore in this era of cutthroat pricing and overbooking. And then you can only give that seat away at the very last minute, which pretty much guarantees that you will be delaying that plane, with much higher financial consequences for the airline. I think overbooking is a better solution for the airlines.