kale73

I am still flabbergasted that so many self-professed seasoned "road warriors" were unaware that lower prices could be sleuthed by searching for them. I can only surmise that some of you have never shopped for a car.

UA-NYC

While I was aware of this trick/feature/bug/whatever, it's more complicated than varying # of stops, time of departure/arrival, different airport options, etc.

Lots of these options don't show up on ITA Matrix, for example.

escapefromphl

You have to do multistop, ITA won't normally show them on a roundtrip search. So it becomes time consuming. I don't know of a tool that breaks up your trip and does multi stop searches automatically?

UA-NYC

Such a tool would help. UAL.com could make it at lot easier by, whenever you click the "add another flight to your trip" clickable link, auto-filling the destination from the last leg into the departure airport from your next leg, but it's not that "intelligent".

Weez_1000

I guess it really depends on which side of the fence you're on. If you knew about this undocumented feature/bug then I can see why you would be annoyed. From where I sit ......on the other side who had no idea this was happening its a very big deal and I'm happy I now know about it.

If it's been around since "about" the time of the merger I don't expect it to be fixed soon. Why fix a (intended or unintended) bug that just adds to your bottom line by the thousands every day? More likely hundreds of thousands every single day?

scottsam66

I would agree with your analogy if when you went into a car dealership, the price you got varied depending on which salesperson was assisting you-- or better yet it depended on how exactly you asked for a car.

LaserSailor

Alas, by ballooning the discussion to over 100 posts the trick has been lost in the verbiage, ergo the FT elite will retain these discounts for themselves,....

Weez_1000

Well it certainly opened my eyes so it has at least a few more in on the little secret, Seth has a few thousand followers so while it may not get TV coverage it will certainly be opened up to a much larger audience, every time this thread gets bumped I'm sure at least a couple of FT are learning about this IMO feature not bug

WineCountryUA

So you have never used an unpublicized coupon?

I know I always use a coupon search before doing an internet purchase of any kind. I regularity get discounts that unless I made an extra effort I would have not gotten. Yet the "masses' don't know about them and the coupons likely were not intended for me, but the companies seem OK if I use them. I just save 40% on a bunch of domain renewals yesterday doing this.

I guess you don't???

1P

^^^^^ I really like this analysis!

1P

Weez, the annoyance has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to keep a secret for ourselves. After all, the reason FT exists is to pass on tips and wrinkles to all those who are interested.

No, the reason some of us were annoyed is because sbm12 clearly thought he had found something new and obnoxious, when in fact it has been with us pmUA folk since well before the merger — I would say since the demise of the much-lamented United Connection (remember that?). Old news, in other words while the thread title "Deceptive pricing" is mere hyperbole.

mduell

Isn't this ITA's bug, that they're not finding the best combinations of flights/fares when you ask for the roundtrip? UA has published all the availability and restrictions to the GDS.

mgcsinc

Nah. It looks like that at first glance, but it actually is because UA does not properly report married segments on response to certain queries, even to its own booking engine.

Dr Jabadski

Thank you. And my apologies for my analogy!

Au contraire, you seem to have great interest in not seeing it exposed and fixed. Seth may not have discovered it but by writing about it he’s made many others aware of it, which is much more than you and any of the others who claim to have been “writing about this for years” have done. Your discussing ad nauseam how “it’s a bug” and how “we’ve all known about it for years” is a convenient way of distracting the conversation.

Once again, concern about it getting fixed and any harm that might cause. Typical “don’t share the good deals because they’ll get shut down attitude”, completely contrary to the intent and principles of FT.

Do you really believe that UA would have a website error, which costs them unknown amounts of lost revenue, for years, without getting it fixed? With all due respect, it’s you who doesn’t “seem to understand what's going on”. To use your analogy, a mislabeled price which is less expensive, and hidden somewhere, and difficult for the average customer to get to is essentially the definition of deceptive and sleazy.

Gahhhhhhhh. Why is it so hard for you to understand what the vast majority of other people apparently understand? Accidents which cost companies money do not go on for years and years. Accidents like that get fixed quickly.

This thread is anything but a waste of time. Seth didn’t “act” like anything and he certainly did not misrepresent or pontificate. He wrote about something which significant numbers of people were previously unaware. BTW, from the FT guidelines: “Personal attacks, insults and "flaming" will not be tolerated and will be removed…”

This quote sums up the attitude of the 2 or 3 people in this discussion who claim that it’s a bug. It creates an accidental windfall for the customer who knows about it , at the expense of the many others who do NOT know about it, and they are worried their windfall might go away. There are also at least 3 times as many people who have written that they did NOT know about it and they think it is, at best, sneaky.

(BTW all, with all due respect to Seth’s thread title, still like mine better!)

LaserSailor

There is so much hot air in this thread the windmills are turning too fast to tilt at...sorry for the dangling preposition ...