Airline Refuses to Honor “Computer Error” Mistake Pricing
Jesse Tabit August 31, 2015
Air Canada’s recent advertisement for a 10 percent deal on their website was actually a mistake fare the airline is attributing to a “computer error” and refusing to honor. Customers who took advantage of the deal – a 10 credit flight pass for $800 – are agitated, taking their frustrations to social media.
@AirCanada is not honouring Flight Pass pricing glitch even though price is "guaranteed" under terms and conditions.@GlobalBC @CTVVancouver
— Neb Wonrat (@bigbert_44) August 27, 2015
Dissapointed in @AirCanada for the glitch they had with flight passes, yst. At least communicate to your staff what happened.
— Priya Tandon (@priyatandon) August 27, 2015
“A computer loading error resulted in a temporary mispricing of a West Coast flight pass product for Business Class,” airline spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick said in a statement. “The product, good for 10 flight legs, was displayed at CAD$800 instead of the correct price of CAD$8,000.”
The Canadian flag carrier has apologized to anyone who took advantage of the mistake fare and says refunds will be provided where necessary. According to Fitzpatrick, “any flight pass credit bookings already made using the passes will be honored.”
For more information on this story, visit Global News.
[Photo: Global News]
@N1AK: That's actually completely different... In your example, a price was agreed upon and then an incorrect amount of money was transferred. What happened here is the merchant quoted a price and then refused to provide the agreed upon service at that price.
@strikerj: It isn't that different the other way round. If someone accidentally transferred 10x the amount required amount to a company for a service/product then you can bet the company would have to give the excess back. The company can't just say they assumed the customer was being generous and "how could they know it was a mistake" and keep it.
Honestly, this sort of thing really irks me... these companies come up with pages and pages of legalese to stick it to you when you make a mistake, but if they make a mistake, they get to wash their hands of it. Some inexperienced travelers might not really know to watch out for fares that look "too low" and might have been posted in error, and even so, why is the customer being unreasonable for buying a product that the airline offered? AC should have honored the passes that were already issued and paid for, instead of earning a reputation for being a company that breaks contracts.
I hadn't realized it was business class. I thought when AC came out and said it was supposed to be $8000 I thought they were BSing and just trying to save their own bacon. If it's J I don't really have an issue. The biggest problem is in the pass T/C it says the prices are GUARANTEED, literally says that. So while I'm not usually ok with them not honoring mistake fares, imo if you let me pay, that should be it, but in this case I think while it's clearly a mistake, their own T/C are contradictory. So they either need to re-word the T/C or honor these (I can't imagine there's THAT many, plus most of these are Rouge flights anyway) or not honor them and offer the people something as compensation not just a refund.
Yeah, this is clearly a pricing error. No reasonable person could believe that they were offering flights all over the Western half of North America in Business class for C$80 each.