5 ms·

I don't see why this is even an issue. You publish a bad price due to your own incompetence. You should have to honor the fare. If the airline overcharged so

by fsk 12y ago

I don't see why this is even an issue. You publish a bad price due to your own incompetence. You should have to honor the fare. If the airline overcharged someone due to an error, do they give refunds? If you accidentally buy 100000 shares of a stock when you meant to type 1000, you don't get a redo. Why should airlines be any different? I once saw replacement electric shaver heads on sale in Rite-Aid. The price should have been $30 but they charged me $1. When I saw how it rang up, I bought another two. Can Rite-Aid demand $58 from me? How is this different?

BillinghamJ 12y ago
> If the airline overcharged someone due to an error, do they give refunds? Yes
toki5 12y ago
The legal answer to your question is that they reserve the right to refund your ticket at any time up to the point of you actually being in the air. Buying a product at a retailer, where your interaction ends when they hand you a receipt, isn't really the same. The comparison would be better if United had tried to charge consumers after the flight. The real question, if you want to use the Rite-Aid example, is "should the employee be allowed to investigate the $1 price tag upon seeing it rung up," and yes, in my opinion, they absolutely should. That gets to the moral answer, which I think is what you're really asking, I honestly don't think it's that black and white. From the perspective of a business, there are two phases to this mistake, right? The first is letting them buy a ticket; the second is honoring that ticket. The first part doesn't hurt; the second hurts a lot. If I can catch that mistake before the second phase, why shouldn't I? Maybe I'll lose some customers who are genuinely upset that they couldn't take advantage of a bug in my software, but in the long run, I'm not convinced it's harmful. Meanwhile, from a consumer standpoint, as someone who has -- many times -- bought things at a premium discount because of a bug in software (preorder costs for video games are especially vulnerable to this), each and every time I make that purchase, I'm willing to accept that if they catch it before they ship it and want to refund me the discounted purchase price, fine. I know I'm exploiting someone's mistake and I feel like that's not completely honest.
rayiner 12y ago
> If the airline overcharged someone due to an error, do they give refunds? Yes?
joezydeco 12y ago
This is an issue, and United is allowed to deny the tickets, because the non-Danish citizens that tried to enter a purchase contract with United did it under false pretenses (i.e. putting down their country of citizenship as Denmark to trigger the pricing error when they were not Danish citizens). Contract law gets pretty precise under these situations. Airlines have been held to task when people found legitimate fares and honestly purchased a ticket. This was not one of those situations. More generous airlines and other large corporations have been known to honor the price anyway to avoid a P/R fiasco and generate goodwill. From my experience, UAL is not one of those companies. =)
- lsaferite 12y ago
  Were they putting Denmark as the citizenship for ticket details or putting Denmark as the billing country for a creditcard to trigger the correct billing currency? I read it as a simple billing currency issue.
BrandonM 12y ago
When I'm at a retailer or a restaurant or wherever and there's an honest mistake, I point it out. I try to treat everyone in a way that I would hope to be treated in the same circumstance. IMO, anything else is selfish and exploitative. I don't know what point you were trying to make with you Rite Aid example, but it just makes me discount your opinion on all things moral. Did you really need that $58, or do you just like pulling one over on people?
makeset 12y ago
> If you accidentally buy 100000 shares of a stock when you meant to type 1000, you don't get a redo. For the record, you might. Stock exchanges retroactively break many trades as "Clearly Erroneous". [1] http://www1.nyse.com/pdfs/CEE_Policies_Email_Submission_Guidelines.pdf http://www1.nyse.com/pdfs/CEE_Policies_Email_Submission_Guid... [2] http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader.aspx?id=clearlyerroneous http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader.aspx?id=clearlyerroneous

by fsk 12y ago

BillinghamJ 12y ago

> If the airline overcharged someone due to an error, do they give refunds? Yes

toki5 12y ago

The legal answer to your question is that they reserve the right to refund your ticket at any time up to the point of you actually being in the air. Buying a product at a retailer, where your interaction ends when they hand you a receipt, isn't really the same. The comparison would be better if United had tried to charge consumers after the flight. The real question, if you want to use the Rite-Aid example, is "should the employee be allowed to investigate the $1 price tag upon seeing it rung up," and yes, in my opinion, they absolutely should. That gets to the moral answer, which I think is what you're really asking, I honestly don't think it's that black and white. From the perspective of a business, there are two phases to this mistake, right? The first is letting them buy a ticket; the second is honoring that ticket. The first part doesn't hurt; the second hurts a lot. If I can catch that mistake before the second phase, why shouldn't I? Maybe I'll lose some customers who are genuinely upset that they couldn't take advantage of a bug in my software, but in the long run, I'm not convinced it's harmful. Meanwhile, from a consumer standpoint, as someone who has -- many times -- bought things at a premium discount because of a bug in software (preorder costs for video games are especially vulnerable to this), each and every time I make that purchase, I'm willing to accept that if they catch it before they ship it and want to refund me the discounted purchase price, fine. I know I'm exploiting someone's mistake and I feel like that's not completely honest.

rayiner 12y ago

> If the airline overcharged someone due to an error, do they give refunds? Yes?

joezydeco 12y ago

This is an issue, and United is allowed to deny the tickets, because the non-Danish citizens that tried to enter a purchase contract with United did it under false pretenses (i.e. putting down their country of citizenship as Denmark to trigger the pricing error when they were not Danish citizens). Contract law gets pretty precise under these situations. Airlines have been held to task when people found legitimate fares and honestly purchased a ticket. This was not one of those situations. More generous airlines and other large corporations have been known to honor the price anyway to avoid a P/R fiasco and generate goodwill. From my experience, UAL is not one of those companies. =)

lsaferite 12y ago
Were they putting Denmark as the citizenship for ticket details or putting Denmark as the billing country for a creditcard to trigger the correct billing currency? I read it as a simple billing currency issue.

BrandonM 12y ago

When I'm at a retailer or a restaurant or wherever and there's an honest mistake, I point it out. I try to treat everyone in a way that I would hope to be treated in the same circumstance. IMO, anything else is selfish and exploitative. I don't know what point you were trying to make with you Rite Aid example, but it just makes me discount your opinion on all things moral. Did you really need that $58, or do you just like pulling one over on people?

makeset 12y ago

> If you accidentally buy 100000 shares of a stock when you meant to type 1000, you don't get a redo. For the record, you might. Stock exchanges retroactively break many trades as "Clearly Erroneous". [1] http://www1.nyse.com/pdfs/CEE_Policies_Email_Submission_Guidelines.pdf http://www1.nyse.com/pdfs/CEE_Policies_Email_Submission_Guid... [2] http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader.aspx?id=clearlyerroneous http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader.aspx?id=clearlyerroneous