(a) You should not be leaving your booking until the last minute. There could be innumerable problems preventing you from booking at the last minute (e.g your internet could go down, your credit card could be declined etc. etc. etc.)
(b) The terms and conditions quite clearly stated the expiry date
Quote:
Flights must be booked between 08:00 GMT 07 June 2012 and 23:59 GMT 14 June 2012.
I therefore put forward that you are making mountains out of molehills !
I'm afraid I must disapprove of your analysis, Short Final. The countdown clock was a prominent, obvious feature of the BA website until today and as such was misleading, to the point where confusion could, and did, occur. This bifurcation of essential information provided to consumers (ie. that which was so prominently displayed on screen differed to that which was provided in the terms and conditions) what she was quite rightly "on about", to use your words. She does have a substantive point of fact, which frankly, I think merits a substantive response by the company, which will be undoubtedly cut and pasted from a tightly-worded script in a back office somewhere.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Short Final
Ultimatley the T&Cs will over-rule any website banners, people should be well aware of that, it's common sense and therefore no confusion caused.
Still doesn't negate my point that she should not be leaving her booking so late !
That isn't always true. This is similar to a discussion currently ongoing on the Amex board about Platinum benefits, where there is very misleading marketing going on.
The Financial Ombudsman recently had a ruling in the case of Halifax Pet Insurance where they had a very prominent web site advert saying their insurance was "life-long", but then withdrew it. Many people were then hit with additional costs because pets now had existing conditions which new insurers would not cover.
The FO ruled that although Halifax was within its T&Cs, it should meet these additional costs.
I think this is a very similar situation. Albeit only for the people who were doing their booking at 2am
And why shouldn't she leave it until the last minute? Otherwise what's the point of having a 24 hr web site and a deadline at 3am? Yes, web sites can go down and credit cards can have problems, but that wasn't the issue. If we'd been discussing whether BA should have honoured the prices had their web site gone down it would be another discussion entirely.
I wouldn't rely on anything the Financial Ombudsman does. They are so unpredictable in their rulings. Also the Financial sector operates in a somewhat different regulatory framework !
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vla
I'm afraid I must disapprove of your analysis, Short Final. The countdown clock was a prominent, obvious feature of the BA website until today and as such was misleading, to the point where confusion could, and did, occur. This bifurcation of essential information provided to consumers (ie. that which was so prominently displayed on screen differed to that which was provided in the terms and conditions) what she was quite rightly "on about", to use your words.
Absolutely. A prominent falsehood cannot simply be disclaimed by something that is buried away in the Ts&Cs.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by A P Yu
I dont think it is buried away in terms and conditions as these and all Sale Fares always state those magic words SUBJECT TO AVAILABILITY.
The fares wanted were simply no longer available when the poster tried to book. Simples.
That's very unlikely to be true. As noted above, the terms of the sale state that it ended at 11.59pm on 14 June.
Given that I've seen no threads saying that availability of discounted J/F tickets had ceased prior to that point, it's unlikely in the extreme that they sold all those tickets by that point.
So BA could not claim that they weren't available. This is a simple case of their web site implying something that contradicted the T&Cs. In reality it's unlikely that LTN Phobia or anyone else in the same boat would successfully be able to claim the difference, I think an apology from BA and a few Avios might be in order.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by highpeaklad
It shouldn't have stopped at midnight. We are in BST ie. GMT +1. The sale should have stopped at 00.59 according to the T&Cs
Well spotted! BA seems to be making a habit of ending sales early, I do recall a number of sales in the last few years when the sales ended a bit premature.
Absolutely. A prominent falsehood cannot simply be disclaimed by something that is buried away in the Ts&Cs.
Not necessarily.
I'm no lawyer, but I suspect you'll find anything on the BA website is an invitation to treat, when you go to purchase your tickets, you are making an offer and BA then provides you with acceptance (or not as the case may be, it should also be noted that the word acceptance is the legal term, so the fact BA emailed you back acknowledging receipt of your offer is not necessarily acceptance, a TN125 ticket number probably would be).
There have been numerous cases in recent years where e-commerce websites have inadvertently displayed incorrectly priced goods in a prominent fashion, however inline with basic contract law the court ultimatley ruled in favour of the e-commerce websites, i.e. that they did not have to honour the orders at the incorrect price.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Short Final
Not necessarily.
I'm no lawyer, but I suspect you'll find anything on the BA website is an invitation to treat, when you go to purchase your tickets, you are making an offer and BA then provides you with acceptance (or not as the case may be, it should also be noted that the word acceptance is the legal term, so the fact BA emailed you back acknowledging receipt of your offer is not necessarily acceptance, a TN125 ticket number probably would be).
There have been numerous cases in recent years where e-commerce websites have inadvertently displayed incorrectly priced goods in a prominent fashion, however inline with basic contract law the court ultimatley ruled in favour of the e-commerce websites, i.e. that they did not have to honour the orders at the incorrect price.
Sorry, this is just noise and obfuscation to me.
The clock on the website should not have been misleading. Period.
BA is an airline. Much of an airline's success or failure is based on good timekeeping. If BA aircraft operated to the accuracy of the website clock then where would we be? Big fail to add to the many fails of ba.com I'm afraid. To add insult to injury the site has been down way too often recently...
BA seems to be making a habit of ending sales early, I do recall a number of sales in the last few years when the sales ended a bit premature.
