Originally Posted by
jsloan
Second, I keep seeing this weird fantasy where all airfare automatically costs exactly the same amount. Perhaps that's true on the routes that some people fly, but for me, that's rarely the case. Sure, they'll often be close, but day-to-day inventory variance wins out. I've found days when UA is $100 more expensive than their competition, and I've found days when UA is $100 less than their competition -- just because somebody in Revenue Management did or didn't open up the W bucket on a given flight.
^ Almost every time I read about BE complaints, pricing is placed into this utopian vacuum of continuous price matching. Reality is more often not the case, and sometime it's not even close. Also, the BE price should not be assumed to be the "what Y would have been" price. And when BE is matched by another carrier's Y, we don't know who is matching who, so we can't say BE is a price increase. Instead it could be that BE is a discount fare that was matched. So who's to blame now?
The bottom line is that whenever a customer isn't buying solely based on best overall value, they are paying more to be loyal. The only difference with BE is that's more visible.
Originally Posted by
spin88
I for one would be POed if an employee was paying United any extra $800 of my money (20 upsells to avoid BE) vs just flying another airline. I know I laughed, and laughed, and laughed when United wanted $120 RT extra to avoid BE on a recent family trip. We just booked OALs for the same $$$, but better service.
Really? You will often glowingly state how much more you pay to fly DL over UA or other airlines. So how is that okay to you, but paying for UA upsells isn't?
And leads to another unanswered point. How did the business customer suddenly become highly price-sensitive? I thought it was about network, product, and perks, not price.