11–20 of 157 posts
If I buy the combo and throw away the fries, nobody's going to argue that I've cheated Wendy's and owe them for the difference in price.
But I'd agree they're still free to refuse me service in the future on grounds of wasting food.
I doubt UA would follow through considering it is illegal to submit known false debts. Plus they're outright wrong that it constitutes "fraud," if for no other reason than the person skipping additional legs didn't profit from it, instead they simply limited UA's ability to further profit off of their travel. If this was "fraud" then any other airline discount or saving would be too. Shop around for the cheapest pric…
I doubt UA would follow through considering it is illegal to submit known false debts. Plus they're outright wrong that it constitutes "fraud," if for no other reason than the person skipping additional legs didn't profit from it, instead they simply limited UA's ability to further profit off of their travel. If this was "fraud" then any other airline discount or saving would be too. Shop around for the cheapest pric…
Ahh yes, the "known false debts act of 1789". The fact is corporations have throngs of willing stooges who are happy to perjure themselves in trial and assert that the debts weren't false at all. Who's a judge and jury going to believe? The scammer who cheated the poor impoverished airline out of its money, or the well-dressed stooge with front-row access to United's records?
Lying to the courts to get what you want is in practice a fully sanctioned strategy for corporations who desire to intimidate their customers by "making an example" of their least favorite customers by throwing criminal charges against them.
Mr. Lundgren can bear witness to this, as can I.
One very interesting thing here is how they're using the credit score system to blackmail people. If this continues, any company can hold you hostage by threatening to ruin your score, without any recourse from you.
I'm surprised we haven't seen more companies abuse the credit reporting system like this. Recourse is painful for the customer, and I imagine a non-trivial number of them will just pay off the debt. I'm guessing with the gutting of agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau we'll see a rise in these type of practices.
The idea that the passenger should have paid more to get off at that intermediate airport is purely a fabricated entitlement.
If they underlying hypothesis behind this entitlement is that "all people should pay the same for the same flight", it is pure hypocrisy, because the airline industry is responsible for, and profits from the whole situation that people in adjacent seats may have paid wildly different prices.
If they want people not to game the system, they have to remove the game from the system. But that game largely benefits them, so they don't. You can't have it both ways: create a game-like system, and not have people some people play it some of the time.
It's not clear why exactly the airlines are so upset about this. If the passenger isn't present they can just shoehorn a standby onto the flight, or at least save on fuel costs.
The airline's business model is to try to charge people from point to point, this scheme takes advantage of that fact to find savings.
The airlines could, instead, change how they charge (e.g. per land mile/per minute in the air) but then it becomes harder to justify why direct flights that are cheaper for the airline to run cost consumers more, not less. And why inefficient indirect flights cost consumers less in spite of being more expensive for the airlines.
Airlines need to keep their current business model to prop up their hubs, but they need hubs due to their current business model. If you invented airlines today (particularly with the new Airbus and Boeing aircraft coming on-tap with greater range) you'd see far fewer hubs, and more direct point to point flights.
This is airlines trying to slow the inevitable, which is that they need to evolve.
This is especially ridiculous with how exorbitant ticket change fees are. I was in San Jose a few weeks ago and decided last minute to stay a few days longer in SF. It would have cost me 125 dollars to cancel or change my already booked SJC-SEA flight, and it would have netted me <90 dollars in credit so I was essentially paying 35 dollars for the privilege of telling Alaska that I wasn't going to fly with them. Of course I instead just skipped the leg and booked a new flight separately.
One very interesting thing here is how they're using the credit score system to blackmail people. If this continues, any company can hold you hostage by threatening to ruin your score, without any recourse from you.
Now, if this were the "social credit" system of a certain country, well, then maybe they really could blackmail you (because you violated a "social order" by playing ticketing games...).
Sometimes I go to a fast food restaurant and discover that while I don't want fries, it's cheaper to buy the whole combo meal than it is to just buy a burger and drink a la carte. If I buy the combo and throw away the fries, nobody's going to argue that I've cheated Wendy's and owe them for the difference in price. But I'd agree they're still free to refuse me service in the future on grounds of wasting food.