From time to time, there are 'heated' discussions on this board, when tips are shared/promoted how to maximise (our custerm's) our frequent flier profits.

Often these discussions are held in specific threads promoting such a maximised 'profit-taking'.

I myself am in favor of sharing on this board. Mainly for the following reasons:

* Fairness to Randy and his/our board here is, in my opinion, to publish/post openly here.
* Fairness to our fellow FlyerTalkers here on this/our board is, in my opinion, to share as much informations here on this board as possible (and as legally ok).
* Fairness to the airlines: if loopholes really harm them, then I don't mind if they get to know. They will anyway know if many consumers take chances.
* Fairness on this board: don't attack (the) poster(s) - discuss/argue the arguments pro and contra.

Rudi

I favour the idea of publishing any idea on flyertalk.com. The more people read and contribute, the better the outcome. I don't mind if airlines/hotels/cars/... will close some loopholes afterwards (and it is still the question if it is cheaper for them to have a loophole that is used by a minority or spend a lot of money to fix the systems (and produce another error). It all depends from the current situation of how much money they loose). IMO, most airlines/hotels/cars/... know many their own loopholes (and surely much more about which we have no clue).

I profited so much from this board. I will contribute in future, too, and hope to give "something back" from that others will be able to profit. (And I think that the openess on the board also lead to wonderful meetings where people can exchange loopholes, too).

There will always be two camps.

1. Those who are happy to share - quickly, any new promos or error fares, or promo points etc. (And inevitably get flamed by some users for doing so.)

2. Those who either lurk or post other than to those threads but share in the discovery nonetheless, but if asked maintain the tip should *never* have been posted anyway.

I am all for LEGAL loopholes/offers/promos/glitches being posted here on FT. I have a feeling that was one of the reasons our host created it and maintains it.

Every airline/hotel program has a bunch a "grey" or less than grey areas that regulars of those Fora discuss at FT meets, and via private email etc. Each one of us can choose to act or not act on those based on our own conscience.

Often is is not even a loophole but just creative application of the rules WHEN someone notices it. How many here have already or will soon fly Concorde roundtrip after spending $1,250 for Inside Flyer magazines? Had that thread not been posted would most of those have bothered buying them? Of course not. The airline trip of my lifetime. Some folks squawked that posting this info would see Qantas block the deal. It would not have surprised me to see it, but so far - the deal has worked for anyone who tried it.

UNITED969 could have kept quiet last month about the $59 + tax Orbitz *Error fares* from all MX gateways for Business Class fares to PVR. And booked for him and his friends instead. Instead 100s of us are now going to PVR for peanuts in style thanks to his generosity of sharing. The posting of the first "find" - fares from ORD in October quickly became clear it was from all gateways, and for all dates more or less. THAT is the strength of FT. A kernal of info gets expanded and tested in all directions.

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~ Glen ~

I appreciate the revelation of various "unpublished benefits." Knowledge is power. Why should the airlines have a monopoly on information, even if they create it? After all, we are bound by their rules, if we choose to play.

I feel that it's ok to post anything you find, but then it should also be ok to accept any outcome, the PVR flights must have cost either orbitz or the airline around $100000 in lost revenue, yes it's their own fault but we have to understand that in the current (difficult) financial situation for them they are always going to divert these losses directly back at their customers through higher fares or less promotion fares.

They screwed up, they will pay dearly for it but next time you don't get your pre-boarding hot nuts think for a second why they are having to cut costs?

If someone finds a loophole offering super elite 1K status for $1000 (an excellent find) and 100 people make use of it, the cost to the airline could possibly be almost 2 million dollars! (6 SWU's have the potential of costing them $18000 in revenue), so when next year certain perks are removed or restrictions are created once more, think for a second if the loophole in any way contributed to that.

FT is just a very small proportion of the customer base but has the ability to cause massive damages to airlines and hotels.

Just IMHO of course...

in my opinion it is true that sometimes airlines will loose (and the costumers, for a limited time at least) winn, if many (too many?) costumers profit from 'extreme' offers/loopholes/whatever.

Sharing/posting openly this posibilities might just help the airline to get to know early/earlier (and I agree, may be in the long run limit and/or define new rules for frequent traveller 'perks') - which, if the philosophy is not to 'hurt/hit' airlines (and their frequent flier programs) 'under the belt', would/should be even more ok/accepted then.

I agree with you Rudi, but to be honest saying that making a profit off a loophole or mistake will help the airline learn about their mistake is of course a bit of a hypocritical theory (sorry for a lack of better words), if one really wanted to help their airline then they would call them and get directly in touch with the IT department, not use the loophole as much as possible in the hope someone will notice.

The past job losses have also hit airline IT support departments and there is certainly a chance that due to a lack of staff they won't notice the mistake till an honest person calls them.

In the case of the PVR flights I understood someone DID call orbitz or MX and that person was subsequently called all kinds of names (also in chat) for doing so as he "spoilt" the deal for others. In this case it wasn't a "deal", it was a mistake, I am glad many people on FT managed to make use of it and am sure they will have a great time but it wouldn't surprise me if the IT person responsable for misloading the fare is now sitting home unemployed...

Just imagine for one second what YOU would do if it was you in this situation, if someone ordered something off you at a wrong price and you are going to make a substantial loss, say $10000... would you still deliver? even if the person never bought from you before and probably never will?

ScottC I agree.

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).

But if 'in doubt' I am (and play) the consumer ('s advocat) and not the airline's controller.

I still believe that the (airline) consumer is in average knowledge far behind what airlines know about pricing, etc.

I think most of us would use such an error or glitch in his favor. But I think that's not Rudi's point.

The question is: would you publicly post your finding here? Yes, you will make some fellow FT'ers happy. But depending on the quality of that error the airline will most probably fix it shortly.

I, too am very glad to have this community here. And there is a good number of FT members not only taking but also giving. I also understand that I have an obilgation to Randy for providing this platform. He has the possibility to make business out of great tips and findings here on ft.com. This is O.K. for me.

But sometimes (and this feeling has developed the last weeks) I am a little bit sick that apparently 'lurker-only' members of the board only pick information to profit but do not share anything with the board. And I really get angry on those people selling information they gathered here on ebay.

And this leads into my decission to not post each and every finding here in the future anymore. If I find a real loophole that I want to be kept as long as possible I would use other means to exchange information with those ft'ers I've got to know personally and where I know they will share their private findings openly with me, too.

Don't misunderstand me. I will still participate actively here and share much information that I think is interesting. But there may be some special things I would not post here any longer. I don't want to assist those 'lurker-only' types of fellows which only want to gain maximum profit out of ft.com without contributing anything.

ScottC, I agree with you on the loss situation. A big airline may have a loss because of an error (e.g. wrong input) made by a person (just think of the bad feelings of the person about his/her mistake. We always refer to "LH", "BA", etc. - but there are PEOPLE behind doing their job). The airline looses money and should normally not get into finacial trouble becuase of the small error. In the past we had posts about automallone (points transfer to Hilton): in such small (?) companies such an error may lead to enormous financial difficulties.

I think it's understandable if a traveller wants to take as much advantage as possible regarding fares, miles, you name it.
It's understandable as well if the airlines want to get as much revenue as possible. They are actually setting up an extremely intransparent system of fares and rules to do so.

Anyway, everything is in a move. A few guys at the airlines take a decision and sometimes they make a mistake. If they do a mistake, I'm usually sorry for the guy. But quite often "loopholes" are based on clear decisions. However, sometimes they work out differently as originally intended for the airline.

It's basically the power of FT that a lot of those tips and tricks show up before the opportunity is gone. But in some cases airlines started to monitor FT. Sure enough the one airline I'm thinking of wouldn't do that to improve their service, but to see how FTs (edit: frequent travellers are meant) make use of their own rules.

In these cases it's really a good question what we should do. Are we still discussing how to use the system in a smart way in this case? Or are we already causing one or the other airline to rethink their own decisions and systems? I wouldn't like that very much.

Personally I often feel like a victim of robbery when the airlines take advantage of my travel needs and make me pay huge amounts of money. I'm therefore glad to take advantage myself once in a while.

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

Yes ralfkrippner, there is certainly a "taker/user" element here on FT. Sad, but true. Happens in all levels of society.

I personally am saddened to read your note. A tip you unearthed late 2001 has gained many FT'ers TENS if not HUNDREDS of millions of free flyer miles. Rudi and ScottC know what I are speaking of. A large number of us owe you a great debt of gratitude as we acted while the offer was still valid. And without Flyertalk none of us would have known. Rudi saw your FT post, and I saw Rudi's later post.



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~ Glen ~

As I noted in the attendant thread, I very much appreciate threads that share such highly prized info personally, and generally love to learn about the offers, whether I decide/wish to take advantage of them or not!

The free flowing info is best, IMHO, and I prefer posting it and reading the posts of others.

Yet I do concede that FT has, ironically perhaps, helped to "dry up" deals as the audience here has become more massive!

Yet what can we do, other than to be "fair" to all?

"THE LIST" was not a failure, IMHO, by any means, and I surely respect that some folks will not post the "deals" they unearth. The willingness such individuals to express their finds via an email correspondence, or whatever is also very much appreciated - naturally!

Many folks will recall that this matter of posting deals, or not, was previously discussed at some length, in the past.

-Mark

Absolutely agree, Ralf's contribution to the community helped a lot of people earn a lot of miles, but it was a genuine promo, not a mistake and not a loophole, it was a promo that created quite a bit of revenue for KLM and hopefully a lot of new customers for the future. I can't ever imagine anyone at KLM HQ being angry that it got posted, probably quite the opposite.

yes, Ralf's post, but even more his explanations of the basic KLM Flying Dutchman rules, helped me a lot to take part and 'win'.

Some days after I read about the promotion on FlyerTalk, I and Gisela got individual letters from KLM (partially targeted at former potential Swissair / Qualiflyer members) to participate and profit.