DL2SXM

not doing it. If i wanted to bad enough I would've done it already. Let me see what the offer is come check in. I will do it if the price falls below $75 one way. If not and I dont get upgraded, I will enjoy the ride in economy comfort (or whatever its called now). You see, I will still get free drinks, leg room and I just bought this really cool book I can read. The meal, bleh. Not interested....

gooselee

I booked a flight today and the buy-up offer was 5k miles (PWM minimum) or $11.50 each way.

DL got an additional $23 from me, particularly since there were no C+ seats left.

DL2SXM

What's the itinerary?

gooselee

atl-mdw/ord-atl.

realjd

Who said anything about fraud? The fact remains that any ticket I book through delta.com for personal travel gets upgrade offers while any ticket I book through BCDTravel/Concur do not get offers. Reading this thread, apparently many other business travelers are in a similar situation. That's not Delta being fraudulent; that's Delta being obnoxious. I'm happy to pay a small amount personally for an F seat, and my corporate travel police allows it. I just don't have the opportunity. I don't know how that makes me entitled.

gooselee

I think you didn't read far enough back in the thread. Buying a ticket and upgrading is fine. You can usually call in to upgrade, out of pocket, tickets booked through corporate TAs where the FCM offers do not show up.

The fraud being referenced was in response to an earlier poster who suggested buying the ENTIRE F cabin with no intent to fly the tickets, just so nobody else could partake in FCM and, hopefully, more seats would remain for medallion UGs on the day of travel.

To me, such behavior is very clearly deceptive and unethical, if not outright fraud. Sure, DL is deceptive all the time with us. But there's a saying about two wrongs and a right or something...

Bowgie

I don't think the person who suggested this was serious.

However, this WAS posted on the United forum when a United flyer was rightly booted out of MileagePlus for repeatedly trying this stunt.

bubbashow

Read all the way back. The person was serious. It was his/her viable solution to not getting F for free. It was suggested by another poster that he/she reference the UA thread.

kaaria

I actually brought it out as a discussion item. Who knew so many feathers would be ruffled?

Many have commented this is fraud. To me it is more a grey area than black and white. It is one of the purposes of the 24hr cancellation policy to allow you to change your mind.

Isn't the ticket where a A-B-C ticket is purchased then the person gets off at B and does not board for C because the direct A-B ticket was significantly higher priced more fraudulent and clearly more black and white? Yet many on FT were/are suggesting you can do this once or twice or you can do it but don't put in your ff number.

gooselee

The 24hr policy is to allow you to change your mind or correct mistakes. But the activity you described isn't someone changing their mind - from the very beginning their mind was made up that they would not use all 16 (or however many) of the seats they were booking.

Hidden city ticketing is clearly fraudulent. I actually think that most posters on FT discourage it, but that doesn't preclude us from educating others on what the potential outcomes of such behavior might be (either in isolation or in a pattern).

avidflyer

No more fraudulent then airlines hiding pricing based on their own competition (or lack of it) in a route where they do not invest in direct service. They want their cake and they want to eat it too.

Fraud is a pretty serious word and neither of these two activities can be called fraud IMO.

javabytes

Agreed. It is not "clearly" fraudulent, that is a matter of opinion and great debate around here.

Personally I believe in the ability to buy something and then throw half of it away if I don't want it. If I buy flights A-B and B-C, and choose not to fly B-C, so be it. I've bought passage on both those flights, and it's up to me whether or not to actually use the product.

Airlines claiming this harms them is ridiculous. No different than if I went to a steakhouse and ordered a 22 ounce ribeye for $65. Then when I decided to eat only half of it, they try to charge me $90 for a 16 ounce ribeye, saying "Sorry sir, if you had told us you weren't going to eat the whole steak, we would have required you to purchase this smaller one at a higher cost. Any harm is entirely contrived as a result of the business's asinine pricing.

Whether one believes it is fraudulent or not, the practice is certainly frowned upon by legacy airlines, and I agree it is not something to be pushed by anyone with a considerable amount to lose. Airlines claim to own my FF accounts and the large quantity of miles contained therein, and reserve the right to terminate it, so fraud or not they have a sizable stick.

gooselee

We can name it whatever. I don't have the legal training or acumen to know whether either of those cases meets the legal definition of fraud in whatever jurisdiction we happen to be in, so I'll happily put that as a caveat to my prior statement.

I think it all comes down to intent:

1. The product that airlines sell is transportation from Point A to Point B. Pricing is based on the general demand people have to go from A to B. There may be some stopping points between A and B, but ultimately the airline is obligated to get you to B, not anywhere in between. If they sell you a ticket from A to B, they intend to take you to B one way or another. Buying a ticket to B when you actually indent to go to C is misleading at best, and while it will work many times, you are always running the risk of the airline transporting you straight to B without stopping at C, as transport to B was your indicated intent. Had you indicated an intent to travel to C, the airline would have happily provided you with a price for that O/D - sometimes it is higher, sometimes lower.

2. Booking out an entire cabin that you don't intend to use is, IMO, along the same lines, and potentially even more severe. You never had any intent to use all those seats, just as the hidden-city ticketer never had any intent to fly to Point B.


And even if we say that airline pricing is deceptive, misleading, unethical, whatever...are we really saying that that justifies equally deceptive, misleading, and unethical behavior on the consumer side?

gooselee

Ok..ok. "Fraudulent" was a poor word choice. Perhaps..."questionable"?

I think part of the issue is that buying a certain airfare is buying passage from A to C. B is included as part of the mechanism to get you to C, but is not actually part of the deal. Similar to the argument (right or wrong), that you are not guaranteed an aisle seat even though you are reserved one, you are just guaranteed something with a cushion and a seat belt somewhere in that cabin.

If you were to buy a fare from A-B and then a separate fare B-C, then you can throw out whatever you want.

Airline seat inventory spoils. There aren't many other products that behave in a similar way, so it's hard to find a good retail comparison. But the closest I can come up with is this: Buying an A-C fare and dumping half of it would be like buying a 2-liter of Coke, then trying to return half the bottle for the store to resell. Buying an A-B fare, then a B-C fare separately, is like buying two 1-liter bottles, then returning one of them for the store to resell.

Doesn't quite work as an analogy since on a plane...that remaining seat is equally hard to resell, but it get to the point of a packaged product vs. two individual products that together produce the same result (2 liters of colored, fizzy sugar water).

avidflyer

I fully agree that booking an entire cabin to secure an upgrade is bordering on/potentially is fraud. I disagree on the hidden city example because the airline is flying there anyway and the fact that you are not in a seat for the last leg not only costs them nothing relative that flight it could end up saving them money if they needed seats for IROPs. The only thing it does do is expose their pricing scheme which puts them in a bad light.

The ALs DO take this very seriously and they are trying to shut down every app/website that will do it for you. Here is an example of one:

https://skiplagged.com/

Needless to say this will be a battle but I think it is interesting to see how it shakes out...