trooper

Got that right!

When one uses THREE exclamation marks to emphasise the nature of the price....." A$5745 return!!!" I suspect it would be rather difficult to argue that one thought it was a normal F fare....

bensyd

Especially with this bit...

You can't take advantage of an calculation error of one party to a contract, clearly the OP had some idea that there was an error. He should have called BF and asked to confirm the price, when it was clear it was wrong an apology and a refund was all that was in order.

I wonder if BF is following this thread themselves.

Leumas

You can conclude from the use of 3 exclamation marks that the OP knew it's a mistake? Come on...! What would 4 mean?

To me, there are 2 issues. Firstly, the OP bought a fare advertised. OP did nothing wrong here. Now, as it turned out, the fare was a mistake fare. However, my point is, the public looking at this fare may not realise it was a mistake fare. It's not like they advertised for $5.70 or even $570. Publicising it here also doesn't mean the OP knew it was a mistake fare. You can argue part of the purpose of this forum is to share deals (mistakes or not) like these. There're specific forums on FT that talk about this. Discount fares (mistake or not) are everywhere on FT.

You can't argue OP was wrong in publicising the deal (and using 3 exclamation marks, he knew it was a mistake and trying 'to screw the companies over'). To me, posting this served 2 purposes. 1 - letting us know of such a deal, 2 - asking the question that did something go wrong since the QF site only reflected a PE fare.

Now, the OP decided to sue leads to the second issue - how hard do you (the customer) push when you realise it's a real mistake? I think it is this second issue that some of you have problem with. Personally, if I knew it was a mistake, I'd take the $1000 as a goodwill gesture.

Having said all that, everyone seems to agree it's BF that the OP needs to deal with. If BF only issues a PE ticket, refuses a F ticket, doesn't respond to calls and refuses refund, THEN perhaps there's a case. Again, personally, I'd tell the credit card company to dispute the charge first.

Dave Noble

Do you seriously genuinely believe from the 1st post in the thread plus the title that the OP really believed it to be a genuine 1st class fare offered by Qantas?

Dave

Leumas

I can't tell you what the OP was thinking when the thread was made.

However, I can tell you that when I first read the thread title, I thought it was for real. When I then read the thread, I realised it could be a mistake fare.

Leumas

BTW, I'm sure most of you here will return the ticket and insist on a PE one if you paid $x for a PE ticket but it turned out to a F/J?

thaigold

Gday all

Let me just make this clear - I did believe this was indeed a real fare, despite what some people here think! There were never any mention of travel class code simply a receipt of First Class and e-ticket from BF.

The main reason for posting on the forum was to let other know about this deal...

You may choose not to believe this - but again that is completely up to you.

Thanks for all replies - I will keep you updated
Thaigold

thadocta

Some interesting reading is available which may be relevant to this case (I found all of this when reading about the mistake fares to India on the BA board).

Dave

Mr. Bean

Well, they said multiple times that it was for F. Doesn't that count for anything? Apparently not.

I'm rather surprised that you think selling a $6K PE ticket disguised as F is not considering screwing over the customer, but instead trying to get them to honor what they've sold (and confimed multiple times) IS considered just that.

The OP is not going after QF, but instead the TA. If the OP were going after QF, then yes, it's a rather strange approach, but he's not.

Are you saying that QF offered the vouchers on behalf of the TA? If not, then they have no part in the OP's decision to get the TA to honor the product they sold.

bensyd

Clearly the OP had doubts about whether the fare was correct. He could have rung BF to confirm the fare was correct and then gone ahead and booked. The fact that he didn't and instead questioned the validity of the fare and whether it was a mistake on a public forum seems strange to me. After all if it was, as he claims to have thought, just a great fare where is the harm in asking BF if the details were correct, instead of posting....

This screenshot provided earlier in the thread shows that the next nearest fare on QF was 200% higher. Would a reasonable person believe that QF was discounting 70%?

Mr. Bean

Well, here is what they told him later, so what makes you think they would have said was a mistake if he called them before booking? I think they only realized it after OP called them about discrepancy with QF seat map.

And besides... even if the phone agent said it was F, it's still a mistake (which they are not accountable for ).

Leumas

It's not relevant how much QF decides to discount normally. Who are we to say? If that fare was not a mistake, would you insist on paying the 'normal' price for it? If they decide to sell it for $1, it's their decision. Like I said before, the airlines complain there is a low demand in premium travel, maybe this was a way to increase demand?

Prices in the cheapest fare bucket vs the most expensive fare bucket in the same cabin class are often different by multitudes anyway.

I can also argue from the screenshot that a direct route should be a lot cheaper than an indirect one involving another airline. Why should I not get a significantly lower price with a direct route?

LHR/MEL/Europe FF

This is exactly what I have been talking about in my posts in this thread - contractual mistake. (Although I wasn't aware it had already been discussed on the BA board it is a useful link.)

I was going to comment earlier today that while the OP has a lawyer thinking it is worth pursuing, BF will have a lawyer that will equally have a counter argument!

The ACCC aspect is the unknown. I was doing some research and while yes they do allow for some mistakes, that doesn't always excuse misleading advertising.

One case we did way back when I was doing law was that of a travel agent poster adertising 7 night holidays. Unknown to the travel agent the airline scheule changed meaning only a 6 night package would be available. The advertisement was found to be misleading. So the test can be fairly hard. In that case the person who reported it wasn't even going to travel... so there was no loss to anyone.

Dave Noble

But there wasn't , as far as I understand, any advertising by BF advertising the fare, just a mistaken description when requesting fares

QF fare in P class was priced up and incorrectly listed as 1st; I don't see that there would be a claim that BF was advertising a cheap F fare and I don't think that the ACCC would class it as deliberately misleading advertising

Dave

docbert

All of the other flights I see on that screenshot contain tickets on 3 different carrier (QF, LX, and a LX codeshare). Multiple carriers will normally increase the price, and a 3x increase wouldn't at all surprise me in a situation like that.

Multiple airlines are currently selling SYD-LON in First for around $10k - given they are "Discounting" the current Qantas price by about 40% are they obviously wrong too?