Price Difference: any recourse?
 

Hi,

Bought a R/T coach ticket in X LAX-HNL a couple of months ago and having checked the price today, the same ticket in the X bracket sells for $102.50 less. Do I have any recourse to recoup the difference shy of paying the $100 change fee and ending up with a $2.50 cert?

Thanks in advance!

In my experience, that's what you'd end up with. Not really worth the hassle.

Yes, you have two options:

1. Call CO and ask them to refund you the difference. They will happily tell you that in order for them to refund the difference, they need to charge you the ticket admin fee for changes --- usually $100. Therefore, you have $2.50 owed to you.

2. Leave it the way it is and suck it up.

This is where NW is better than CO. NW will do a ticket price change adjustment and only charge you $25 -- refunding you the difference as an MCO.

-RM

Ridiculous
 

I have just found myself in the same situation. Such a policy is ridiculous. So, in other words, all the airline has to do when they want to lower the price is put it under some other fare class. What happened to the days when all that needed to be the same was the itinerary in general and the credit was yours?

Let's see, that would be when oil was $30 dollars a barrel (not 60 to 70), short notice travel was far more expenseive, and the airlines were actually making a decent amount of money. None of us like it, but the reality is that the only way the airlines are even marginally profitable today is by charging every penny they can for changes, etc.

I've written this before, but will repeat. Buying an airline ticket early is like hedging a transaction in business - you are protecting yourself against a future increase in price. If the price went up - would you expect Continental to ask you to pay an additional fee?

What if you try changing from Continental.com directly. I tried that once and although did not pull the trigger, it mentioned a $30 change fee... It was a U class ticket changing to X class but still all they were asking for was $30.

But if you buy an item in a store, and three months later the price drops, you wouldn't be entitled to the difference. IMO, same thing with airline tix. Frankly, for some of my flights, the fare increases as it gets closer. Wouldn't want them banging on my door for more $$$.

Exactly. The fact that CO (and NW and UA and others) allow you to re-price a ticket at all (net of a fee) is atypical of other industries.
- If you ate a Big Mac one week and the next week it goes on sale, McDonald's doesn't refund you for the price difference;
- If you buy something from Macy's and it drops in price the following week, you don't get a refund (although I've heard of people returning and re-buying the item after the price has dropped, ... could be why some retailers give you only the dropped price as a refund, although you could argue the point)
- If you buy a Ford car and a day after, they announce a rebate, you're S.O.L.
- If you trade a stock one day and the price changes the next day, you don't get a credit for the delta.
There are, however, examples where at a wholesale or B2B level, you get "price protection" for 30 or 90 days ... this tends to coincide with the desire for the channel to stock your product. This is uncommon at the retail level.

Mind you, you have a 24-hour grace period to refund your co.com tickets, so if the price drops within 24 hours, you can cancel the ticket free and buy a new one at the lower price.

If CO competes in a market with B6 or WN, they match their policies, hence the $30 fee. You probably ticketed in a B6 market.

I had a flight that I canceled that was EWR-MSY and since B6 competes JFK-MSY, it had a $30 change fee which I used for a EWR-CGN flight.

- HF

I thought that WN had no change fee...

Airline tickets are different than all examples above. In these examples you have actually used the product or completed the transaction. WIth airline tickets pricing is all over the place. A person buying an X ticket 3 months in advance is assumed to get a better deal then buying a ticket 4 weeksi n advance. That is the hedge (or supposedely). The fact is that airlines really don't work that way anymore and pricing rarely has anything to do with how much it actually costs to get that butt in the seat from point A to B. That's why I could buy a $240 RT BWI/LAX today for a trip 6 days out. I am sure I have paid less the people who bought 3 months out.

If you reward the airlines with your advanced purchase ( yes reward, you have given them cash to operate for a service that actually takes place in the future. How many businesses have that operating model) that is non-refundable if you can't take a flight. The least they can do is give you a refund if the fare goes down because they mispriced demand and fare levels.

I would consider going for the $2.50 refund on prinicple becuase it probably actually costs them more to refund the money. Maybe if enough people do this they'll get the idea.

extra wrinkle
 

Its not just the market, but also the specific fare. CO recently had fares that were cheaper than B6 in a competing market, however that fare had a $100 change fee. In fact my reservation is a combination of fares, so that co.com shows that it would cost $100 to change the outbound, but only $30 to change the inbound.

FWIW: I have changed a WN flight online without a fee.

How do you get "yes reward, you have given them cash to operate for a service that actually takes place in the future. How many businesses have that operating model". While I agree they have the cash in advance, they also have the commitment to provide the passenger with a seat at the price agreed upon, even if they end up oversold and must pay compensation for a volunteer that might exceed the price paid.

You seem to miss the concept - the airline pricing models evaluate load factors and determine how many seats to sell at what price and time. The consumer decides how much he is willing to pay, how important the timing is and decides to make a purchase at what THEY decide is the maximum benefit. BOTH parties make imperfect decisions - why should only the seller have to stick with the contract?

WN is a totally different can of worms. They also don't allow standby on discount tickets. A colleague of mine who kept touting WN's "no change fee" policy was recently burned by a $150 upfare to come home just a few hours early from a meeting. The same change would've cost $25 on any major carrier, or $0 if you play the standby game.

So the next trip, they pay WN extra to get a refundable/changeable ticket so as to avoid this issue again.

I'm thinking that when you combine the high fares that WN typically has (they're seldom the cheapest), the upfares for standby or going home early, and now people paying extra on the off chance they'll want to change and come home early, the occasional $100 change fee a traditional carrier hits you with balances out in the end.