Originally Posted by
emma69
Re: the bolded part - whilst the airline cannot make you take a flight, they absolutely can charge you more for not doing so. Whether they do or not is another matter, but they could quite legitimately charge your credit card for the flight taken (after the fact).
It's not the only example of having to take more to ensure the cost remains the same. Take clearance sales. Someone has a container they want emptying, the buyer agrees to pay $100, not for the one mirror he thinks is worth that amount, but for emptying the entire unit - he can't just take the mirror and say 'you can't make me take more stuff', because the contract says they can (either by voiding the entire deal, no mirror, if they got wind before the action, or applying additional charges afterwards).
It's also common with auctions - the term 'job lot' - you take it all for the price agreed, whether you want all of it or not. You attempt to leave the thin, dying cow behind at the livestock auction after purchasing a job lot, and the auctioneers will charge your for its disposal.
LOL! More analogies. Love 'em. Okay, here's where your particular analogies break down:
1. I already took the container home at the clearance sale. They can't MAKE me wear that horrible purple jumpsuit! I threw it in the trash. And there's nothing they can do about it.
2. I already left with the sickly cow and brought her back to my farm. No way was I going to drink her skeevy milk or eat her crappy steaks! I euthanized her and buried her in the woods. They can't now charge my credit card for a higher price.
But thanks for the exercise! Good try. Got any more?
Just FTR, I did some research last night, and I learned a few things:
1. Millions of people have done "hidden city" ticketing. Happens all the time. Some do it practically WEEKLY! The airlines don't like it, but there's not much they can do about it. And nobody, not one person, can report a single instance of an airline trying to charge them the higher price after-the-fact. Not one. Just like the TSA can't show us a single terrorist caught by their absurd molestations. Not one.
2. My brother is a lawyer, and I asked him about this last night. Here's what he told me: Hidden city ticketing is NOT illegal. No laws are being broken. The only legal aspect that might come into play is contractual law, but breaking the provisions of a contract is NOT illegal. The only recourse is a lawsuit in CIVIL court. So, if an airline wanted to get more money out of me, they'd have to sue me. And if they did, this particular clause in the contract is so one-sided and onerous that they would lose.
Here's a bit of contract law trivia: Contracts are not "laws". They are agreements between two people or entities that can involve the legal system to enforce them. But the reality is that anyone can put anything they want in a contract, and even if I sign it, if the contract doesn't meet some basic standards of fairness, it can be voided. Happens all the time. Think about pre-nups: how many socialites have taken their rich husbands to court to get out of their pre-nups when the marriage fails? Hey, she signed it, she agreed to it when she married the bum...but now she wants more of his money than the contract allows. Well, yeah...if a judge rules that a provision of the contract was unreasonable, BOOM - out it goes. But this has to GO TO COURT. That's the part that's not gonna happen. Can you imagine US Air taking my elderly, disabled, cancer-survivor, war-veteran-widow mother to court and telling a judge that they want her to pay more money because she...<GASP>...didn't take a flight in order to save some money? ROFL! They'd be laughed out of court.
3. Should the airline attempt to charge my credit card the fare difference (and again, there are no reports of this EVER HAPPENING), all I would have to do is dispute it on my credit card. I would win, because I paid for the portion of the ticket that I used. The airlines may WANT me to fly the whole route, and may WISH I'd paid the higher price for the ticket, but I bought it legally, and was ticketed for the legs I flew. The fact that I managed to get my ticket for a lower price is nothing but smart consumerism.
4. The only real risk of doing a hidden city ticket is if you are a frequent flyer and get caught, they could take your FF miles away (There are scattered reports that this has been threatened, and 2nd-hand reports that it's been done, but no actual first-hand reports of it ever happening to someone). Travel agents do have more to worry about - if they issue hidden city tickets on a regular basis, they could be hit with a debit memo from the airline.
So in the end, we have all you people all up in arms crying "unethical! unethical!" about doing something that is a) not illegal, b) not immoral, c) common, and d) trivial. But questioning my morals seems to be an obsession to some of you, so I'm happy to continue the conversation, if it gives you
Something to Talk About.
(By the way, that last line...yeah. It's a movie. With Julia Roberts. PWNED!)