Kacee

That is incorrect. Air carriers are not subject to the FTC Act.

Airlines are in fact exempt from most consumer protection laws, which is why they are able to get away with practices that other businesses cannot.

egentry

When the 5 rdm (or however much) Hkg first class award tickets were not honored it was obvious that it was a mistake. When TODs are being sold this mistake is not so obvious.

What ever. Before they charge your card for a new amount, they should contact you since this is not the amount shown.

yul36

Since you had canada in your itn. If one of your legs passed through, or O or D from here also complain to the Canadians. They whacked LX last year and take a dim view of bait and switch.

Duke787

+1. This is fraud there's no way around it no matter how {you} try to spin it.

No other company in the US is allowed to sell you a product with a receipt that quotes $X and then turn around retroactively tell you that they mischarged you and meant to charge you $Y. Period. End of Discussion.

There's no gray area here, there's no wiggle room. This isn't UA advertising $X and then telling you on the check-out screen that it's $Y.

This is UA advertising $X, telling you on the check-out screen that it's $X, charging your credit card $X and then deciding later to charge you $Y.

Timidocvl

Any other examples that folks have seen of this? Seems bizarre that UA hasn't noticed and fixed the issue.

demkr

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0 Mobile/11D201 Safari/9537.53)

This happened to me twice a year ago or so with upgrade offers with the wrong amount quoted. I was able to get a refund for the difference while keeping the upgrade...but only after jumping thru hoops.

Nice to see their IT systems still haven't been fixed.

Timidocvl

I can tell you that on advertising and marketing, airlines are subjected to FTC laws - congress has just given DOT the authority to investigate / apply it. Southwest was just fined last year because of incorrect advertised pricing for example.

Kacee

First, I agree with you that what UA is doing with the undisclosed, after-the-fact additional charges is wrong and DOT-complaint worthy.

That said, you're wrong about the FTC Act. Air carriers are specifically exempted. See 45 U.S.C. § 45(a)(2).

Please note as well that Southwest was not fined by the FTC (which has no jurisdiction over airline advertising). It was fined by DOT. Southwest Airlines Hit with Second $200,000 Fine Over Fare Ads.That is 100% consistent with the regulatory framework I'm talking about.

Timidocvl

I think we are saying the same thing. Same law - just different folks enforcing it. Your link specifically says that someone else other than the FTC has the power to enforce the law, not that the law is not applicable.

Timidocvl

Email from DOT today - and why it's important to report the complaints on this, specifically where it says: "we pursue enforcement action on the basis of a number of complaints which may indicate a pattern or practice of violating our rules"

See body of the email from DOT to me:

"Based on the information you have provided, your complaint appears to fall under the Department's rules. I will forward your complaint to the airline and ask the company to respond directly to you with a copy to me. Airlines are required to acknowledge receipt of a consumer complaint within 30 days and provide a substantive response to the complainant within 60 days. I will review the airline's response. If you need to contact me, please include your name and case number (see above). I will make every effort to reply to your message within one business day.

If our review of your complaint and the response from the company discloses a potential violation of our rules, we may pursue enforcement action. Generally, we pursue enforcement action on the basis of a number of complaints which may indicate a pattern or practice of violating our rules. Your complaint may be among those considered and may lead to appropriate enforcement action including the assessment of civil penalties. "

Kacee

Sorry, we are not saying the same thing at all. Air carriers are exempt from the FTC Act. DOT fined Southwest pursuant to its own rules, not the FTC Act.

Glad to hear about the positive response from DOT

cmdinnyc

So, basically what I'm reading here is that UA has outsourced its front-line customer care service to the DOT? Because using UA's own customer care doesn't seem to get anywhere near the same level of response and guaranteed timeline.

Darlox

Got the same response myself yesterday.

I'm sitting back and letting this play out now. After peaceably trying to resolve this directly with UA, the "web support supervisor" who was my last point of contact said that he was forwarding the case over to Customer Care, and that I would receive a response within 24 hours.

That was ~96 hours ago. The DOT has both processed my case and responded to me with a far more informative and personalized letter in less time. I am beyond annoyed at this, and really hope UA gets absolutely POUNDED with fines for this kind of behavior.

PTahCha

Except the difference is the results are tracked and published to the general public, and there are financial penalties if they do not meet the timeline.

CDKing

The DOT response is their standard template response acknowledging the receipt and what the standard turnaround times are don't read too much into it.