People Take Advantage of Website Bug - Insanely Cheap Flights

[Greenday]

http://news.yahoo.com/battle-over-33...--finance.html

Basically, a glitch in the website allowed people to book flights to Hong Kong for just 4 skymiles and a small amount of government taxes. While the price is correctly listed the advertised price. It was only when you went to the purchase page that the price changed. Now, thousands of people are expecting United to honor those prices. The DOT had already passed a law saying that once a ticket is purchased, an airline cannot raise the price of that ticket.

I honestly have to side with the airline on this one, even though I've been screwed over by airlines multiple times before with their shitty no refund policies. The flights were advertised with the correct prices. People knew they were being charged the incorrect price from the advertised price and took advantage of it anyway. The airline should be forced to honor the advertised price, not the bugged price.

[crashhelmet]

It always irritates me when those without Honor demand others to have it.

[Greenday]

It always irritates me when those without Honor demand others to have it.

Not entirely sure who each person is in your statement.

[crashhelmet]

Not entirely sure who each person is in your statement.

It's the customers without Honor demanding United Honor their tickets. The vast majority of them purposely, willingly, and fraudulently bought the tickets. I wouldn't be surprised if most of them had no intention of taking the trip or if they'll even be able to get a valid passport in time for the trip.

I can see the possibility of the inverse. United left themselves open to an agreement that, in normal conditions, should be honored. But I highly doubt they intentionally set this up to dick over would be passengers.

[SongsOfDragons]

If I saw that bug while I was trying to book tickets I would probably have stopped and emailed to ask what was going on... O.o

I can say that's what I think I would do, because I encountered a similar bug, though much smaller in scale, in Sainsbury's once. I was buying some trousers which were priced at £10 - happy with what they were, willing to pay that price.

They rang up as 50p!!

O.o went I, *shrug* went the cashier, *shrug* went the nearby manager. Since that's what rang up I might as well take it because it would take too long to fix, said they, so I got a pair of semi-nice trousers for what, a 95% discount? Not bad.

Did I take advantage of it? Kind of, I think. I left with 50p pants. They couldn't have taken my tenner for it anyway because the computer wouldn't have let them; their till would have been out. I didn't run back and immediately get six more pairs nor did I yell in the street ALMOST FREE PANTS. I like to think I'm honest :P

I feel for the people who are the first (i.e. not the people who crowd up to use it later) to use a broken ATM that's spitting out free money. How do you find out?

[Andara Bledin]

I hope that the airline figures out some way to prosecute the people who bought the tickets purely because of the glitch for fraud.

^-.-^

[lordlundar]

Not the first time, won't be the last. Other airlines have even been taken to court to try to get them to honour the stupid low price only to have the case thrown out. So there is a precedence in favour of the airline if it gets that far.

[Canarr]

Is there no law in the US governing errors like that? Under German law, if a business erroneously marks a product at too low a price, customers can demand they honor that price ONLY if it is still a reasonable price for the product offered. Say, a TV for 500€ marked as 400€, customers could expect to be actually given that price, because such a price reduction could conceivably happen. A 500€ TV marked at 5€, not so much. And I'm assuming, those flight prices would fall in the latter category.

[Nekojin]

Is there no law in the US governing errors like that? Under German law, if a business erroneously marks a product at too low a price, customers can demand they honor that price ONLY if it is still a reasonable price for the product offered. Say, a TV for 500€ marked as 400€, customers could expect to be actually given that price, because such a price reduction could conceivably happen. A 500€ TV marked at 5€, not so much. And I'm assuming, those flight prices would fall in the latter category.

The laws on the books are basically about honest advertisement, and there are exceptions written into the law for honest, obvious mistakes - if you're selling a $500 guitar, and the ad accidentally says $50, you're not legally bound to honor that price. The same thing should apply to these tickets - United Airlines could cancel all of these tickets, refund the spent points/money, and say, "Sorry, it was just a computer error. We're not honoring that." The aggrieved customers could, of course, sue them over it... but any judge worth his salt will throw the case out of court, and possibly thank the litigants for their filing fees.