Originally Posted by
Kevin AA
But you don't know that in advance. That's the point I'm trying to make. Every additional person who saves a seat on the flight devalues EBCI more, starting with just one. A)
or B) might happen, and your mere presence on the plane saving a seat is what devalues EBCI, because you are letting someone else who is further back to cut in line and board with you. The gate agents won't allow that, but greedy passengers can just do it themselves and the other passengers are expected to deal with it.
You don't have to know that in advance. And no, not every additional person who saves a seat on the flight devalues EBCI more. Why? Because you don't know any more than I do who is and who is not affected by a seat saver.
You are looking at this as an all or nothing situation. It's never that simple. Seat savers certainly can cause someone's EBCI purchase to be devalued but there is no guarantee that will happen. As I've explained, for your claim to be true and mine false, every single EBCI purchase would have to be devalued by every single seat saver. There is no way for you to prove that. The problem is that your claim requires positive proof. Meaning it can be proven only if every EBCI purchaser agrees that they didn't get what they paid for.
My claim is that a single seat saver doesn't necessarily devalue EBCI. I only need one EBCI purchaser to agree that the seat saver didn't affect them. I do that and your theory is disproven. To put it in probability terms, which you seem to like, what are the odds that the first EBCI purchaser on the plane wants the one seat that is being saved by someone who boarded before them? The odds are against that happening. So the majority of the time, there will be at least one EBCI purchaser who doesn't even know a seat was saved, let alone their purchase devalued.
I really cannot make it any simpler than that. I get that you are totally against seat saving. I don't care one way or the other if you are against it. I respect your opinion on it. You just can't in any way, shape, or form, prove that every seat saver devalues every EBCI purchase. That's it. That's my whole point. Well that and not all seat savers are greedy. That uses the same logic so I'm not going to repeat it again. And before you say "neither can you prove it doesn't", I don't have to. I never claimed that seat saving never devalues EBCI. I understand that there are no absolutes and guarantees in this. That's what you seem to be missing and offering your opinion as fact.