If this link works, it shows that Expedia is registered to do business in Missouri. You can check this sort of thing online easily with most states. Got to your state's Secretary of State website and look for the search engine for business entities.
If you file suite against the entity, serve them at the registered agent given by this search.
Anyone with any specific questions can PM me.
If you try this route it's true some of you may get nothing. Some may win judgments, some may get settlement offers from the entity on the grounds it's cheaper to settle than to defend.
So for those who think we're being out of line for expecting what we paid for, I take it that there should be no complaining when XX Airlines offers a $198 transcon fare, pulls it as a "mistake", and cancels the booking (perhaps conveniently a day or so before your planned Thanksgiving trip, since loads are sky-high and they can get some Y fares on the plane instead)? Because that's where we ultimately headed folks if we take this assertion to its logical extreme...
Exactly. Specific performance is important here.
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This game is not as much fun as it used to be: 2008/2009 Frequent Flyer Program Fleecing Award goes to Delta Airlines
Lets get real here people, you all scrambled to buy tickets, knowing that the fare was wrong, and now you are threatening lawsuits and media campaigns to expose the issue........ Laughable at Best.
theres a saying: "there is no such thing as a free lunch"........
Im sure if you got to fly on these uber-ridiculous fares, there would be some who would have the hide to complain about something before, during or after their flights.
Lets look at it from the opposite way: You go on Priceline, enter $2000 price for a short-hop NYC-BOS which two weeks out is selling for $200. Priceline probably knows you made the mistake, they issue the ticket – you are probably out of luck.
Forget priceline, lets look at a real airline: You buy a ticket, ticket is issued. You screw up on a date or destination or something. You can probably call right away and get it fixed. But try calling after 48 hours and see what they say
Same issue, for many of us: tickets were issued, mailed, received, credit cards charged and itinerary on website still shows as valid. How much grace should an airline get to fix its mistakes when we will never get more than 24-48 hours??
The difference with the Iceland fares is the fare mistake was to their hub, bringing in people to Iceland meant they would spend more there, etc. Not that Italy or Cyprus needs any more tourism... but my wife and I will probably spend $$$$ once in Cyprus and the Greek islands. We were looking at buying a separate LCA-HER/ATH ticket once there.
Same issue, for many of us: tickets were issued, mailed, received, credit cards charged and itinerary on website still shows as valid. How much grace should an airline get to fix its mistakes when we will never get more than 24-48 hours??
Maybe that's why reservations are just getting canceled, with no official word from AZ or Orbitz. They want to act quickly to get these reservations off the books, and perhaps after the fact will issue a public apology? Maybe their PR machine is also planning to send goodwill gestures (I don't know... maybe $500 vouchers or something), but take more than 24 hours to sort it all out.
Airlines, GDSs, travel agencies et al could build or contract for services to make sure this doesn't happen to the extent it currently happens. These service providers do what they do and get what they pay for and so if it's not a priority for those parties to mitigate the chances of such a situation happening in the first place, the burden is not upon us the passengers to figure it out for them.
If I were the OP of this thread, I'd use the service being developed and offer it to airlines and GDSs to help them shut down such outcomes. There's real money in doing that in a far easier way than going after retail customers.
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This game is not as much fun as it used to be: 2008/2009 Frequent Flyer Program Fleecing Award goes to Delta Airlines
BREAKING NEWS: THE ALREADY-TICKETED BOOKINGS WILL BE HONORED BY ORBITZ AND ALITALIA.
I'm on the phone right now with Orbitz, and they've just (within the past few minutes) brokered an arrangement with Alitalia:
1. You can have a courtesy cancel.
2. You can pay the difference in fare.
3. You can have your booking reinstated.
(No joke, this is what Alitalia just offered to Orbitz.)
My booking that had a ticket number is being reinstated from "cancellation mode" as we speak by the Orbitz ticketing desk - I'm on hold, and decided to post this for others to benefit. The thing to remember is that Orbitz might push you to numbers 1 or 2, but they ARE authorized to perform option #3 at your insistence!
Orbitz is also aware of the notoriety that this has received, and is expecting to send out an email about the matter sometime today.
finally some sense here. This is precisely the case and should be completely understandable to one and all. Sure, I know you'd love to have 2C in Magnifica Class round trip to Cyprus! Who wouldn't?!?! But if 1200 tickets were sold and AZ has one flight to YYZ a day, assuming 20 seats in J (maybe it's 25?), that means 60 straight days of their Business Class product is sold out completely with folks on fares that won't even cover the cost of the food they consume on said flight. 2 months of flights at these prices? Ouch.
Agreed. I'm only going to post once - as I have previously explained my thoughts on a similar subject (see here page 13 post 250). GUWonder and I have had the pleasure of debating a similar issue before, so I will resist the temptation to rehearse the same arguments.
To those who claim that they did not know that this was a mistake, I ask them to consider this. There is another thread running at the moment where a woman who reported the fare to AZ is currently being castigated (and worse) for having done so. Implicit in this criticism is the recognition that she blew the whistle on a secret; she told the airline of its mistake. She is being criticised because, through her actions (perhaps), other FTers have been prevented from taking advantage of the mistake. If it were a genuine offer like Ryanair's £0.01 fares (although this is a poor analogue because a LCC trip from London to Bergamo hardly compares to a Business Class trip across the Atlantic), then no-one would worry about someone querying it with the airline.
It was a mistake. Some people have got their tickets. Others have not because AZ (or the selling agent) has realised the error in sufficient time for it to be corrected. If you've got your tickets . If you haven't, unlucky. Speaking honestly, however, how many who booked these tickets thought for one moment that this was a genuine fare?
BREAKING NEWS: THE ALREADY-TICKETED BOOKINGS WILL BE HONORED BY ORBITZ AND ALITALIA.
I'm on the phone right now with Orbitz, and they've just (within the past few minutes) brokered an arrangement with Alitalia:
1. You can have a courtesy cancel.
2. You can pay the difference in fare.
3. You can have your booking reinstated.
(No joke, this is what Alitalia just offered to Orbitz.)
My booking that had a ticket number is being reinstated from "cancellation mode" as we speak by the Orbitz ticketing desk - I'm on hold, and decided to post this for others to benefit. The thing to remember is that Orbitz might push you to numbers 1 or 2, but they ARE authorized to perform option #3 at your insistence!
Orbitz is also aware of the notoriety that this has received, and is expecting to send out an email about the matter sometime today.
I don't think it's good business sense to cancel reservations without contacting the purchaser. This is handled very poorly by Orbitz. A simple e-mail or phone call with an explanation would have been good enough for me.
I agree
Not sending an email -
and only responding to queries by telling customers to call them (and thus spend 1.5 to 3.5 hours on the phone) just so they can find out why their tickets were cancelled is not good business practice.
And nobody seems to have been given a reason as to why AZ have cancelled tickets that actually fits their T&Cs.
If I were the OP of this thread, I'd use the service being developed and offer it to airlines and GDSs to help them shut down such outcomes. There's real money in doing that in a far easier way than going after retail customers.
Let's not give rosj that idea! He could definitely approach them with that plan and make a profitable arrangement.
BREAKING NEWS: THE ALREADY-TICKETED BOOKINGS WILL BE HONORED BY ORBITZ AND ALITALIA.
I'm on the phone right now with Orbitz, and they've just (within the past few minutes) brokered an arrangement with Alitalia:
1. You can have a courtesy cancel.
2. You can pay the difference in fare.
3. You can have your booking reinstated.
(No joke, this is what Alitalia just offered to Orbitz.)
My booking that had a ticket number is being reinstated from "cancellation mode" as we speak by the Orbitz ticketing desk - I'm on hold, and decided to post this for others to benefit. The thing to remember is that Orbitz might push you to numbers 1 or 2, but they ARE authorized to perform option #3 at your insistence!
Orbitz is also aware of the notoriety that this has received, and is expecting to send out an email about the matter sometime today.
Items 1 and 3 sound nice. Who would take option 2?
__________________
This game is not as much fun as it used to be: 2008/2009 Frequent Flyer Program Fleecing Award goes to Delta Airlines
Programs: US2, OnePass Gold, StarwoodPlat, Hilton Diamond, MarriottSilver ... like the rest of the world
Posts: 3,129
Quote:
Originally Posted by HeathrowGuy
So for those who think we're being out of line for expecting what we paid for, I take it that there should be no complaining when XX Airlines offers a $198 transcon fare, pulls it as a "mistake", and cancels the booking (perhaps conveniently a day or so before your planned Thanksgiving trip, since loads are sky-high and they can get some Y fares on the plane instead)? Because that's where we ultimately headed folks if we take this assertion to its logical extreme...
Not a good analogy. Transcons can be had a dime a dozen in the $350 - $400 range from most any point on either coast. A $198 fare is something that's in place about 30% of the time with years of precendent. Any astute traveller knows this. The $198 fare is about a 50% discount off standard excursion, adv purchase tickets and is reasonably common. That fare is also well advertised and matched for weeks at a time by most any carrier in affected markets.
AZ's deal of $33 in Business Class represents something that is wholly unprecendented. Additionally, it is not advertised in any marketing effort, no other carrier matched, and it was yanked within 12 hours. On top of that it was about a 99% discount to the normal, precedent fare.
Two very different scenarios.
Again, I wanted all of you folks to get these tickets and have a great time in Cyprus, or wherever. But, at some level common sense must prevail.
Not one purchaser of these tickets thought this was a promo fare --- everyone knew it was a glitch fare that would soon be gone. Folks raced to the finish line in hopes that their bookings would succeed before AZ knew what was happening.
Not laughable at all, at least according to Travelocity/Sabre, who's fighting with AZ mgmt to honor the fares.
Does this come from a well-placed source or supervisor at Travelocity? The guy I spoke to, who spoke broken English, didn't really seem to know what was going on except that my reservation had been cancelled by the airline.
I need to get over to the Patent Office and try to get my filing in before rosj.
Ha... but seriously, could we agree to edit that idea out? May not make a difference, but I hate to see him credit you with a money making idea from your post
Location: No idea usually, but "home" is the SF Bay
Programs: Precious Metals in some of the following AA/UA/NW/DL/F9/SWA RR
Posts: 1,852
Quote:
Originally Posted by sbtinme
Not a good analogy. Transcons can be had a dime a dozen in the $350 - $400 range from most any point on either coast. A $198 fare is something that's in place about 30% of the time with years of precendent. Any astute traveller knows this. The $198 fare is about a 50% discount off standard excursion, adv purchase tickets and is reasonably common. That fare is also well advertised and matched for weeks at a time by most any carrier in affected markets.
AZ's deal of $33 in Business Class represents something that is wholly unprecendented. Additionally, it is not advertised in any marketing effort, no other carrier matched, and it was yanked within 12 hours. On top of that it was about a 99% discount to the normal, precedent fare.
Two very different scenarios.
Again, I wanted all of you folks to get these tickets and have a great time in Cyprus, or wherever. But, at some level common sense must prevail.
Not one purchaser of these tickets thought this was a promo fare --- everyone knew it was a glitch fare that would soon be gone. Folks raced to the finish line in hopes that their bookings would succeed before AZ knew what was happening.
Believe it or not, I have grown to expect NOTHING in regards to airline fares. I have recieved transit on 0 dollar fares as well as 6976.88 fares in J for the exact same city pairs and days of week. Frankly, I have no clue how the airlines construct fares nor do I care.
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It was a mistake. Some people have got their tickets. Others have not because AZ (or the selling agent) has realised the error in sufficient time for it to be corrected. If you've got your tickets . If you haven't, unlucky. Speaking honestly, however, how many who booked these tickets thought for one moment that this was a genuine fare?
I figured it was a mistake, but I didn't know for sure. Someone was selling something for a price X, I found that price attractive--I purchased it. Isn't that how it works?? In my mind, whether it was a 'mistake' or not is not really an issue in my mind at least.
Airlines want us to buy over the internet and especially their own website--it saves them money. Well with the internet comes a lot of added 'clarity' to 'the common man' regarding fares, etc. You take the good with the bad.
Programs: US2, OnePass Gold, StarwoodPlat, Hilton Diamond, MarriottSilver ... like the rest of the world
Posts: 3,129
Quote:
Originally Posted by party_boy
Believe it or not, I have grown to expect NOTHING in regards to airline fares. I have recieved transit on 0 dollar fares as well as 6976.88 fares in J for the exact same city pairs and days of week.
Okay, but that's not the case 99.949534% of the time, is it? Pricing precedent matters enormously here. Good luck telling a judge that you thought a $0 fare was a reasonable price for something the guy next to you paid $6976.88 for.
Programs: US1, AA Platinum, Hilton Gold, SPG Gold, Marriott Silver, Hertz 5*, Etc.
Posts: 361
I suppose next week Wal-Mart will start going to people's houses and reclaiming goods they have purchased because they really didn't mean for prices to be that low?
"No, ma'am - we meant to charge you $1.49 for that bottle of Sam's Choice Cola that you only paid 49 cents for - you should have known it was a mistake. Now, give us the soda back."
Items 1 and 3 sound nice. Who would take option 2?
GUWonder - the memo just went out to the Orbitz Ticketing Desk a couple of minutes before I called, My booking has been completely reinstated into the orignally ticketed fare class, and the ticket will be sent out today.
UPDATE:
For those who have not yet been ticketed, the ticket should ultimately go through if it hasn't been cancelled, as per the Ticketing Desk.
GUWonder - the memo just went out to the Orbitz Ticketing Desk a couple of minutes before I called, My booking has been completely reinstated into the orignally ticketed fare class, and the ticket will be sent out today.
UPDATE:
For those who have not yet been ticketed, the ticket should ultimately go through if it hasn't been cancelled, as per the Ticketing Desk.
I hope you're on to something, I'm starting to get uncontrollably excited again
Programs: US1, AA Platinum, Hilton Gold, SPG Gold, Marriott Silver, Hertz 5*, Etc.
Posts: 361
Quote:
Originally Posted by HeathrowGuy
GUWonder - the memo just went out to the Orbitz Ticketing Desk a couple of minutes before I called, My booking has been completely reinstated into the orignally ticketed fare class, and the ticket will be sent out today.
UPDATE:
For those who have not yet been ticketed, the ticket should ultimately go through if it hasn't been cancelled, as per the Ticketing Desk.
Any word on those who were confirmed but the ticket number had not yet appeared when they deleted them this morning? (e.g. if you have a confirmation code on Alitalia, and a separate confirmation on a partner airline, but only the partner flights to and from Toronto are showing up?) If Orbitz honors this for me I'll be buying quite a bit of travel from them!
BREAKING NEWS: THE ALREADY-TICKETED BOOKINGS WILL BE HONORED BY ORBITZ AND ALITALIA.
I'm on the phone right now with Orbitz, and they've just (within the past few minutes) brokered an arrangement with Alitalia:
1. You can have a courtesy cancel.
2. You can pay the difference in fare.
3. You can have your booking reinstated.
(No joke, this is what Alitalia just offered to Orbitz.)
QUOTE]
Is the official recommendation now to go ahead and call Orbitz. I have been patiently waiting as instructed
If you call Orbitz, make sure that you are connected with a Travel Desk that can connect to the Ticketing Desk. Don't try to resolve this at first point-of-contact with the nice-but-rather-clueless front-line folks in Mauritius - get through to the US-based emps. (by escalating your call to a super who can then pass it over) to get it resolved.
BREAKING NEWS: THE ALREADY-TICKETED BOOKINGS WILL BE HONORED BY ORBITZ AND ALITALIA.
I'm on the phone right now with Orbitz, and they've just (within the past few minutes) brokered an arrangement with Alitalia:
1. You can have a courtesy cancel.
2. You can pay the difference in fare.
3. You can have your booking reinstated.
(No joke, this is what Alitalia just offered to Orbitz.)
My booking that had a ticket number is being reinstated from "cancellation mode" as we speak by the Orbitz ticketing desk - I'm on hold, and decided to post this for others to benefit. The thing to remember is that Orbitz might push you to numbers 1 or 2, but they ARE authorized to perform option #3 at your insistence!
Orbitz is also aware of the notoriety that this has received, and is expecting to send out an email about the matter sometime today.
Thank You! Excellent news! Do we need to call to get this to happen or will it happen automatically?
![[FARE GONE] Wickedly Low Biz Class Fare from YYZ to LCA (Cyprus) on AZ (Alitalia)](/forum/iconimages/mileage-run-discussion/fare-gone-wickedly-low-biz-class-fare-yyz-lca-cyprus-az-alitalia_ltr.gif)
Should be amenity kits. I don't work for DHS and my name is not Doyle. (That's a discussion for Travel Safety and Security.)
. If you haven't, unlucky. Speaking honestly, however, how many who booked these tickets thought for one moment that this was a genuine fare?
In my mind, whether it was a 'mistake' or not is not really an issue in my mind at least. 
