ozstamps

Have now got to the point of having personal email exchanges with the General Manager of Thai UK and Ireland.

First dealt with the assistant, then the PA, and now got the head honcho sending me personal emails. Initial feeling I get is they are not too excited about doing anything much at all "based on legal advice", but one never knows with me on the case.

Spider

Keep the pressure up, Glen!

AFAIK, newspapers in the US and UK have been notified of this incident and are ready to get involved... Really bad publicity for Thai!

BobbySteel

Glen will settle in private probably, then tease the forum without ever giving any details but "he's pleased with the result"

ozstamps

Do you know that for sure Spider or just surmise it? Have not read anyone post thus.

Well TG lawyers seem to have told them to hold the line unless there is any media focus on this. If anyone has a spare hour lying heavy on their hands, I have an email list of several 100 USA (mostly) TRAVEL WRITER ONLY email addresses. TV, radio, and print. Anyone that wants them, please email me. Even Randy asked me for it recently as it appears even they did not have it in such a specific form.

If you send out an email with these folks "bcc'd" in it gets to a LOT of people very fast.

Maybe add on this interesting press piece from BBC News where the Thai Prime Minister is quoted as saying his national airline "sucks". It might make good copy as well as the refusal to offer any solution or offer re the internet error fares, at a time they have had 300,000 cancellations due to SARS, and are giving away 1000s of freebies right now to media to boost Thai's image and visibility:


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1348843.stm

Thai PM: National airline 'sucks'

Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has sharply criticised the country's national airline in an interview with a local newspaper, describing it as "terrible".

"If I were not a public figure, I wouldn't fly with Thai. It sucks."

Mr Thaksin slammed Thai Airways International for its high ticket prices, uncomfortable seats and poor service.

The airline's top executive agreed with him, saying improvement were needed.

Prime Minister Shinawatra told the Bangkok Post in its Thursday edition that he was "very happy" when he was not able to get a seat on the carrier.

"Business class on other airlines is better than Thai's first class. Our fares are also higher," he said.

Thai Airways president Pisith Kusalasaiyanond admitted the comments were justified in an interview with local radio, saying the facilities needed to be improved.

=====================

kempis

TG obviously knows who we are with 0GBP tixes since they could send us an email but still all my reservations are still in the system, why? Why didnt TG just cancel all reservations at once? Afterall we are holding up A seats for the entire summer

btw are you talking to Mr Kriangkrai Manomaiphan Glen?

SMessier

Perhaps they think it's a better idea to let all these unticketed reservations get canceled on their own at midnight tonight (as per the fare rules?)

kempis

All my bookings are still there

SMessier

My one booking is still there as well. Perhaps someone will come in and clean up on Monday? Surprising they didn't cancel them at the first chance they had. Especially for those who, like me, didn't even make an attempt to have their reservations ticketed, I don't see what legitimate complaints we might have.

yonatan

I'm sorry for jumping in after only skimming, but 6 pages is an awful lot to read, and if I'm waisting your time with this post you're free to ignore it.

If I understand correctly, Thai charged some peoples' credit cards but then tried not to honor the fare, is that correct?

I was one of those who benefited from the $350 tickets to Australia two years ago. You'll recall that Travelocity claimed Qantas wouldn't honor them. From the research my family and I did (including speaking with a lawyer in the US), it appeared that there's a principle in common law as follows:

1. If a business makes an obvious pricing mistake, it can refuse to honor the price "up to the cash register", with the understanding that the error will be fixed immediately (otherwise it's bait-and-switch).

2. Once the business has taken payment (e.g. charged your cc), it has accepted your "offer" to purchase at the stated price and is now in a binding contractual relationship with you that can't be unilaterally voided.

After sending some strongly-worded letters to Travelocity refering to the above, they decided to abandon their preferred course of unilateral "solutions" to the problem (cancelling the tix and giving us vouchers for $25) and finally started negotiating with us. We happily settled for discounted economy tix to OZ from our respective places of residence (CA, Western Europe) for $350 (Travelocity made up the $800 difference).

hth

Yonatan

SMessier

Unless I missed something, no credit cards were charged, as paper tickets (no etickets are available for this route) must be issued at a CTO in the country where the trip begins. Those that have made it to a CTO reported that TG has said they will not honor the fare/issue the ticket.

Some of the credit card discussion comes from the fact that one could enter his cc #, though the disclaimer about this being necessary only for etickets was given.

LondonElite

...and all of this was underscored by the stated requirement to pick up and pay for the tickets at the TG CTO in London ("the cash register").

At the cash register they said "sorry, our mistake."

As we've said before, fun, but over.

chfenton

Sorry, too to jump in. I had read this thread when there was only 20 or so responses, I came back today to see over 200?

What a sad day for our society that we have so many, otherwise assumingly rather intelligent people, try to take advantage of something such as an honest mistake simply because it is to their benefit? I don't know, I guess my ethical standards are set much higher than some of you.

What if it was the other way around? You pay $500 for a ticket as that was the fare you saw and booked on the web and when you go to ticket they come back and say oops sorry that was a keypunch error-that ticket should have been $50. Can anyone honestly say they wouldn't accept the refund? Of course not!

The point is mistakes happen and they should be rectified. Many times companies out of goodwill will honor mistakes in their customers favor, but to continue to fight a blatant error-after being told it was an error- well IMO its just sleazy and hopefully for all your sakes you can sleep at night and look yourself in the mirror.

In the first few posts, it was clear that everyone thought it was a mistake. Other foot, what if the shoe was on the other foot is all I keep thinking. I've made mistakes at work, I'm sure most have. And I'm sure computer keypunch mistakes are rather easy to make.

And as far as being a binding contract, where is the consideration?-as I understand a contract is not valid without an offer, acceptance, consideration etc... IF they did not take your money, I think the case is further weakened, but again it shouldn't matter- IT WAS A MISTAKE. I bet those that believe they should receive something for nothing probably look at every ad received on Sunday to see if their was a misprint on the price of a big screen TV so they can go argue for that too.

Just wanted to offer my own opinion.

kempis

If only this price would have been on FRA-BKK instead.....

House

I agree with a lot of what you said, but UK law states tha

ralfkrippner

Any news on that?

Just curious as a not offer-participating 'spectator'...