IMHO, the costs to the airline are not as high as the "retail" price which I believe your are quoting.

Also in past years it has not happened very often, but on my international tickets mistakes have been made by the airline. No the airline never called me and pointed out the error, they were perfectly willing to take the extra money from me and I dare say without any remorse. If it wasn't from the knowledge that I have gained from this board and other sources, I would have never have known.

So a thanks to all contributors and a vote for the sharing of all information. We as individuals can then decide how to act as dictated by our conscience.

I agree 100% with Rudi's positions. All info. should be shared.

I personally would not take advantage of pricing errors (e.g., $24.98 DEN-FRA return)as I feel that this stealing. This is only my personal opinion and others are free to do as they wish, including posting information regarding these errors..

Acheiving status according to the published rules is perfectly acceptable. If one can qualify for LH Senator by taking FRA-ZWS twenty times for 2,700 USD so be it. If one can qualify as a 1K by flying 100 segments for 1,500 USD so be it. Both LH and UA will presumably have new loyal customers who will have to spend money to use their miles (yo upgrade, anyway) and SWU's. LH and UA do not lose money when I use a upgrade cert or a SWU. They do not give me an upgrade seat unless they couldn't sell it.

ScottC, I share your general sentiment, but here's another way to look at it:
It's hard to say how much it truly "cost" the airline in this case. I suspect that most of these people had no prior plans to visit PV and only went and chose Business Class because of the super-low fare. So for these passengers it's not like the airline "lost out" on the difference between the full rate vs. the $59 fare, because they would not have even bought tickets otherwise. The airline really lost only if the $59 passengers took up seats that it could have sold at full rate to other passengers. Without a crystal ball it's hard to be certain whether or not these seats would have gone out empty otherwise, and if they were going out empty anyway, the airline's only real loss was the difference between the $59 fare and the actual cost to carry an extra passenger (fuel, catering, frequent flier miles, etc.).

I agree the end result has probably been good overall ScottC. I would regard it as a loophole in essence, as unless Ralf happened to have seen it on the BELGIUM website, which was the main target group few would have known. The Swiss site had it up (in German) for a while as Rudi knows, but it disappeared early year. I do not believe it was on any other local site and most certainly not on the Netherlands main site AFAIK.

In short I feel most here who obtained the offer were NOT remotely whom the airline was trying/interested in targeting with the very narrow localised promo. Still, a legal "loophole" that many here took advantage of nonetheless.

And yes, agree with Rudi, that ralfkrippner is one of the few persons alive who understands how the FD scheme works, and that includes the bulk of their employees. Without his ready assistance most would still be scratching their heads in confusion.



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~ Glen ~

Back to Rudi's opening post, this Newbie is in agreement with full sharing. I sometimes
thought that sharing a limited promo/cheap run would mean more competition for the few available seats. Fortunately, I have grown away from such a selfish mindset.

Thanks to all of you original community members. Your guidance and assistance are greatlyl appreciated on a daily basis.

Cheers!

Post. Share. Be nice.

ditto!

Sharing is the very essence of this community (or whatever you feel like calling FT).

Yes there are lurkers (but not all are bad, Hi William ). Yes there are FTers who take and never give ( ). And Yes some info posted here can mean that a deal/loophole is pulled/closed.

But whilst all this is happening those who take part with the right mind frame have a great time, learn loads and do gain a lot more. So all in all, a good deal to me.

Thanx a lot for the accolade, you made me flushing...
It was just luck that I found that KLM promo and of course this is kind of a promo that I would post here again, no doubt.

But what I meant was that if I would discover a loophole that e.g. would make it possible to re-use electronic tickets again and again for checkin without marking them 'used', I would not post that here (as I would have some months ago). Instead I would use other means like a list ( ) to just inform such people I know would not try to sell such an information on ebay and who would share their sources with me, too.

This development really makes me sick, it's just not that family-feeling that I had as I joined a year ago...

But such is life...

One of the most famous expressions ever spoken by an Australian Ralf.



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~ Glen ~

Although Ralf was the first person to turn me onto the KLM promotion, I was informed of it a month later by a colleague in Brussels. Therefore I am grateful to Ralf for getting me into it earlier than I would have been otherwise (I was able to shift some already planned flights onto KLM and its partners) but as Rudi stated there were other channels other than FT for doing so (while it was not promoted here with fliers, the IST office was very well aware of the offer by mid-January and was verbally telling people about it, IST was a big Qualiflyer station).

I also agree with Ralf that too many things are showing up in other forums such as Ebay, that really ticks me off. As I said earlier, many things that end up here are imprudent and do nothing more than make offers go away and get miles jerked out of accounts.

A classic example would be the recent 50K Hilton promo. It was great that it got posted, and even more so that apparent FT'er pressure got them to open it up to anyone. What was not cool were the few threads started asking people if they were able to register for both promos or to state that they got both promos. It should be apparent to all why this is so.

I am always amazed at how little the general public knows about genuine ways to get more miles. I think we are a small group, in comparison to the general flying public, so information shared has a limited audience (except that I do share many points with people I know.) I have benefited from what is shared, and I share with the same generosity. I have had people e-mail me with some bonus, or tip that they did not want to share publicly, and although I did not understand the rationale I respected their request. Sometimes these same "tips" showed up by someone else, and whatever the person who shared it with me worried about, I'm not sure actually happened. Each of us might have our own standards of what we would "take advantage of" and what we won't. I'd like to think that we do things with the British definition of "scheme" and not the American definition of "scheme." I have personally benefited greatly from being a member of this board. Thank you. 300K away from lifetime Platinum with AA, thanks to these boards, and something I would never have known existed.

------------------
Ms.DtG

ozstamps:

And I found another interesting text on this website:

And with some deeper research I found the original text of it, stolen without any scruple from a website called ft.com...:

...One of the most conspicuous of them was Rudi who was member of a gang of 28.000 which cut a swathe of terror through the airliners-country since 1987, booking deeply discounted RTW tickets, burning just one UA SWU for 29.000 miles and gaining millions of bonus nugget miles on their gold-cards. He met with another guy called Randy in a mountain hide-out called the house-of-miles, who fancied himself as Robin Hood who rubbed the rich airliners and helped out his poor ft-gang with tips for free upgrades.
He was shot and beheaded by bounty hunters. - Nope, wrong sentence-, He was honored by the miles-marshals with fancy cards and ever since gets free op upgrades...


[This message has been edited by ralfkrippner (edited 08-05-2002).]

"I am personally against exploiting mistakes (like apparently wrong priced offers, typing errors, etc. etc.).

I am all for getting the best official price, the best ratio of personal costs/rewards/services for me (and as many FT colleagues as possible)."

I agree with the above, but I am more apt to let the vender know when a genuine error has been advertised, not take advantage of it. I do this for two reasons: 1) I get something when I do so (tangible from them or a point in fairness) and 2) It is the right thing to do. When a vender makes a material error posting too high a price, it is likely to go unpurchased. All error therefore only cost them money. It is a one way road.

On point, a really good, but real benefit (Hilton point to update e-file, etc) is the kind of stuff that seems very fair and should be posted. If Hilton failed to put the limit on this benefit and someone up dated 10,000 times in a month (or maybe 3 times), that would surely be abusive in my book

Grocery store ventors and many other retailers are an exception. When the grocery store messes up and charges too much I make a stink until they get it changed in their computer. They have benefited by cheating people for ...(hours, days, ?) until it is corrected. It these people had to sell a couple items under the posted price (very rarely happens) it is purely pay back. Scanner are used to save costs associated with check out, and often for the generation of material gain as the expense of buy shoppers. But that is another topic.

I think there are 4 issues with Errors and Loopholes at play here:

Sharing The Info

I think all deals should be published on FlyerTalk to get as broad an audience as possible. I believe "lists" are counter to the community spirit of FlyerTalk. I recognize that many folks are into it just for themselves and would do anything to prevent a company from finding out about an error or closing a loophole. Lists may be good for them. But lists limit the amount of folks that can be made aware of and take advantage of some deals.

What Am I Doing?

Am I taking advantage of an error or jumping on some legit deal? I usually shoot first and ask questions later as the deal may turn out to be legit or honored. But if I went into the deal knowing that it might be an error (as many threads annoucing such deals usually clearly state), then I wouldn't complain if it ended up being an error and I was told they wouldn't honor the error. I don't notify them if I think it's an error, but I also don't hide in the shawdows, crawling about like I know I'm doing something wrong. I also don't alter my normal behaviour in order to deliberatly perpetuate what might be an error. I assume the deal is legit and act normally with respect to dealing with the company.

Should They Close Loopholes?

I think yes. Loopholes are usually unfair to other travelers. Almost always they are unfair to the company. As I take advantage of some loopholes at United, I know full well that I am depriving other 1Ks, Premier Executives and Premiers of legitimate opportunities that they should have. And other times I know that I am getting additional services that United did not intend for me to have. I can rationalize and "justify" my actions in my head any way I want (Oh, this just makes up for the crappy video I had last week), but the fact is I know it isn't right. But loopholes are there and I tend to take advantage of the ones that aren't criminal in my mind.

Should The Companies Be Made Aware Of Loopholes?

Not by me. As Sherlock Holmes once said when asked why he was not notifing the police of some minor crime he stumbled across while investigating a different matter: "I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies." But I will say that it's been my surprising experience that most companies are already very aware of that the loopholes exist! Sometimes they don't close them because of the hidden (nonpublished if you will) benefit they provide, other times they don't close them for technical reasons that they don't feel the cost to close them is worth. And still other times they don't really care if a few folks take advantage of the system.

I'll end by saying I don't like "lists" for another reason, especially in regards to error fares and rates. I think they presuppose by their very purpose for being, to keep companies from "finding out" and that the participants know or at least suspect that the deal is in error, and are knowingly, willingly and consciencely trying to perpetuate the error. In other words, I think it's one thing to take advantage of an error (because it may not turn out to be one), but another thing entirely to try to do everything possible to perpetuate that error.

These are just my own opinions and those that allow me to look at myself in the mirror and say I've not crossed the line with my own personal ethical standards.

[This message has been edited by PremEx (edited 08-05-2002).]