Originally Posted by
rylan
At the time of Delta canceling the ticket, the OP had already canceled his other trip that he booked with miles. So there was no duplicate booking when DL pulled the plug on the 'mistake' fare or whatever you want to call it.
Sorry, but whacking the ticket 6 weeks after booking is bs. There should be some accountability and recourse for the OP from Delta. If they won't honor the original flight then they should offer to reinstate his award booking that he had and canceled at the original mileage rate. Its absurd to be blaming the OP for booking something that was available on the website and I would argue not completely obvious that it was a mistake. Its not like it was one of those $50 fares or something.
I would not let this one drop without some compensation. Whats next, to say its ok for airlines to come back and look for extra money after you booked because they raised the fares? 'Oh you booked a cheap V fare, but we are selling B fares now because we underestimated demand, so you owe us more money.' If you go to a store and buy something they don't come back later asking for it back or for you to pay more.
You have an excellent argument. Once you get the 006 Ticket it means you have a legal document and if there were any issues I wonder why Revenue Management did not catch this and cancel the ticket right away. So does this mean that airlines should have an "Audit" before the airline ticket goes to ticketed?
I think airlines should audit the tickets before the tickets ticket to be sure that the airfare is legitimate. What if you purchase a ticket and your travel date is 6 months away? Those with earlier tickets will have a confirmed reservation with the fare locked in and be ticketed lets say 15 days or less from the time you purchased it. The airline would have taken your money. Those with later tickets would be ticketed and confirmed 30 days give or take after purchase.
For tickets within 24 hours they would be pushed to the Revenue Management Auditor who then approves or denies the ticket based upon the fare code on a Priority Basis. Mistake fares would be less likely as the Auditor must then verify that the proper fare basis was loaded properly.
My Father worked in finance and we talked about mistake airfares and he said airlines sometimes have people who enter in the wrong pricing information that gets transferred to the website and other third party reservation systems. What I find interesting is why is the ticketing process so automated? Furthermore my Father said that once its ticketed an airline has a duty to cancel the transaction right away or else it becomes a legal and binding transaction.
If airlines want to avoid this then the system needs to queue the tickets to the Auditing Department who approves or denies the purchase with their sine and date along with a reason. If the ticket is denied an automated e-mail goes out with the reason why the ticket was denied. The airline then needs to protect the passenger on another reservation for the best possible rate that prevailed at the time of purchase with the option for the passenger to cancel it within 72 hours and keep the same seats.
If I wanted to take the flight I would pay whatever the rate Delta gave me and perhaps they would throw Travel Vouchers my way that I could apply. I still would not be out because I am paying for the legitimate reservation and have no non-refundable reservations purchased.
A note on the booking website could say about the Audit Process and not to purchase any non-refundable purchases until after the reservation gets ticketed which could take up to 30 days for the Audit.
As far as I know all Delta is obligated to do is to offer you to book you at the prevailing rate on the date you originally purchased the reservation and possibly Travel Vouchers as a Gesture of Good Will. No more no less.
What are your thoughts on this?