Originally Posted by
3Cforme
That's an interesting set of examples. IMHO it shows that UA is not honoring its published Customer Commitment.
http://www.united.com/web/en-US/cont...omerfirst.aspx
Advise about lowest available fares
On our website, at our ticket counters and city ticket offices, or when customers call United Reservations to inquire about a fare or reservation, we will tell customers that the lowest fare we offer may be available through one of our other sales channels, if that is the case.
Since airlines offered the Customer Commitment elements in 1999 to forestall legislative requirements, this looks DOT-complaint worthy to me.
http://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/dot/fil.../av2001020.pdf
While I might agree, I sure hope no one files the DOT complaint, as the website charges normal users what they're supposed to be charged. The fact that power users can take advantage of a bug to get a lower fare by mistake is not something I want the DOT trying to fix.
Originally Posted by
Kacee
It's arguably deceptive if you take into account UA's "guarantee" that you will get its lowest available fare booking on .com: When it comes to finding the lowest United® fare online, we guarantee you will find it on united.com.
What they don't disclose is that their booking engine will not actually show find you the lowest available fare for a connecting route.
But see, here's the issue: it's not actually finding cheaper fares that UA intends to offer for sale. It's tricking the system into giving the customer a price that s/he is not supposed to get. On other airlines - DL, for example - married segments are a bar to using the individual-segment availabilities. I'm pretty sure that that's what UA means to be doing, but it's broken. I'm much happier this way.