Dieuwer

Why the need for a fancy " Digital Operations Center"? Instead, UA could install software that checks every fare ready to be filed with something simple like: IF CPM < 5 THEN REJECT. But all fares ready to be filed that are CPM > 5 will be allowed to enter the publishing queue.

takeahike66

Low published fares has nothing to do with this "op center", the "op center" purpose is to detect erroneous fares generated by bad web programming.

Published fares are the ones that any TA can look up, and the rules behind the fare.

The "erroneous" low fares are the one put out by the United.com website, due to programming error.

I am just trying to keep the discussion on the point, not side bars not related to the original post.

mikew99

Nice gesture? It's the law for airfares in the U.S. (at least when DOT chooses to enforce it)!

If anything, I'd say it's a "nice gesture" when an airline honors the fares they sell without whining to the DOT about having to live with their mistake.

Dieuwer

Then fix the programming error instead of dumping another layer of human incompetence on top of it.

Baze

I think that is what they are trying to do, find the programming errors so they can fix them. I have written software in the past and you can't QA yourself no matter how good you think you are. If they think it will save them money overall by catching the problems before having to honor the problems then it is worth it, good business sense to me. Of course if you are the consumer who will be negatively impacted you would not want them to catch the errors then force them to honor them. If you were the business owner would you want to have to honor errors which could cost tons of money or would you rather pay a smaller amount to catch them ahead of time?

Clincher

There are no mistake fares only airline sales

desi

There are two points of view here.
a) Strictly technical legal
b) practical business sense

If one were to go by a) and say "it is law" then it is reasonable for airline to find any technical loophole to get out of incurring loss. So when one goes by "it is the law" bandwagon, we cant whine when airline lawyers find technical loophole

If one were to go by practical business sense then airline has to weigh pros/cons of business (short and long term goodwill vs revenue, etc.) Believe thats what luv2ctheworld was pointing out.

Dont believe intent of DOT law was to assist people in grabbing mistake fares. Too many people whinning to DOT about mistake fares will surely lead to changes (bureacrats and airline lobbyst are very powerful people and are not stupid) which will harm general public.

Of course, to each its own and can certainly do whatever they feel confortable with.

mherdeg

This is a great opportunity to transmit information to UA — post a bunch of Tweets like "Looks like @united posted a #mistakefare on EWR-CAE : http://bit.ly/1DLyTuK" and then see whether the Digital Operations Team members investigate and become eligible for subpoena / involvement in the ongoing federal investigation.

You could also start a long and noisy conversation on Twitter with content like "Screenshot shows @united offered me a $109 buy-up to First but charged my credit card $359. #mistakefare ?" and maybe you'll get the attention of the Digital Operations Team and they'll investigate for you and help resolve the issue! Very thoughtful of them to offer this service.

Or you could make social posts like "Booked a @united First class fare online and after a cancellation they said I only had a coach ticket. Fraud or #mistakefare?" and if your conversation is trending enough, perhaps the Digital Operations Team will relay that information to management and they'll fix the issue.

Or maybe Tweet "applied a GPU on ZRH-LHR-EWR and @united charged me an extra $100 Air Passenger Duty. #mistakefare" and perhaps that feedback will be passed along that this is a common mistake with fares that is happening.

Very glad that United is devoting staff to fix these longstanding issues with mistakes with their pricing!

luv2ctheworld

Can someone point out language in the law or DOT document where it explicitly applies to airlines that have made mistake fares or to have to honor a mistake fare, especially one where it requires undue manipulation from the buyer? To my knowledge, it wasn't created so mistake fares were forced to be honored.

I think it is one thing hold an airline accountable for a valid fare, it is another if the fare was considered invalid in the first place. And there are many ways for the airlines to wiggle around that, unfortunately.

Looking at how DOT ruled in the recent UA DKK fare, it seems that DOT didn't feel UA needed to honor that mistake fare.

Exactly my thoughts.

channa

This is brilliant! Litter this sort of stuff all over the place so they don't know if it's real and/or they become desensitized to it, negating their fortification efforts!

Meanwhile, the real fare finders will lay low and resort to informal phone trees and text messaging groups to stay off the radar.

UA is just pushing this stuff underground. I guess, that's still a win for them, though, as the exposure level will be smaller if it stays off tweets/blogs/etc.

Often1

DOT took the position that US rules would not be applied to UA regarding fares marketed on a Danish website to residents of Denmark. If those were US residents who chose to go to a Danish website and reset the version of the website, DOT determined that they would not get the protections of US law.

This does nonetheless signal a lack of tolerance on DOT's part for those who seek to use its rules in situations where it was clearly unintended. None of those people can show any harm unless they can prove that a valid fare available to them at the time they booked the mistake fare was no longer available by the time the mistake fare was withdrawn.

None of this costs UA or any carrier any business any carrier cares for.

Tblack15

+1 It never states those things. Hence why there's 5,000 posts in the DKK thread with different interpretations of the regulation.

"Post Purchase Price Increases" can be interpreted either way I guess.

If the airline can prove that their website was manipulated, or the fare was incorrectly filed, then I have no problem with them cancelling all the tickets.

If they misplaced a zero, a la BOS-ICN F, then the airline should honor it in good faith, regardless of the DOT. Just like a store putting the wrong $50 sale label on $500 shoes.

Within the next year mistake fares will become it's own little club like FDers, it won't be worth it to share it to the masses. To be honest, if I found one right now, I wouldn't share it.

Alpha Golf

Using the same programmers who can't manage leap years or code shares?

But here's my deal for UA -- instead of spending all of this money, for a modest fee I'll monitor FT and flightdeal and I'll send you an email every time (after I've booked my seat, of course )

villox

If you look at the Sitscape website under customers:

https://www.sitscape.com/index.html#

They're still using the tulip.

GUWonder

This may be amusing. UA could may have inked the deal with this company sometime in the third quarter of 2014. And yet two quarters later UA has the Great Dane blunder going on for hours and hours and hours and hours with a very active FT thread too? Great deal.