Aer Lingus is apologizing to some 100 customers to whom it accidentally sold transatlantic tickets for a measly 5 Euros.
The tickets were supposed to cost 1775 Euros. Whoops!
The airline is refusing to honor the tickets, saying:
“It is a genuine mistake, a fundamental mistake on our part. We rectified it as quickly as we could. We have contacted the customers and given them the opportunity to re-book,” he told RTE state radio.
“To sell a business class flight for a fiver… that is a genuine mistake, people are going to know that there is something up.
“It is really a case of ‘if it looks too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true’,” he added.
The Irish Consumers Association is having none of it. A spokesperson told the media:
“The offer was made, it was accepted by Aer Lingus. Consumers booked and paid to bind the contract.
“Realistically I think Aer Lingus is going to have to do something to abide by it (the booking) and to help them,’ he said.
What do you think? Should the airline have to stand by this price?
Airline seeks to cancel ‘accidental’ sale fare [The Age] (Thanks, Mandy!)
(Photo:Cubbie’N Vegas)
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I’ve used this airline once and I had no problem with them. They are a small airline though and might not be able to eat the cost of thier mistake and I’d hate to see them go under for something like this.
@cookmefud: Yes, well it’s two different questions as we often see.
Must they, by law, honor the price? No. It was clearly a mistake. Airlines don’t give that deep of a price cut without some sort of other advertisement. Really, who gets a transatlantic flight for less than $10 USD? A reasonable person would know that it was a mistake.
Should they honor it from a PR/Business perspective? Probably. If I were them I would have done it, and told every newspaper about it.
But nobody ever said that execs always make the best decisions.
@digitalgimpus:
How is this in any way bait and switch? Where is the advertisement used to induce?
The company could parlay this into good PR, but they are under no obligation to, and I do not hold it against them if they choose not to. Sorry, once again you have not won the lottery. Move on.
No harm done. Simple mistake. Though I would love to have bought a ticket for $5 to travel trans-Atlantic, it just isn’t realistic. Maybe a small discount could be given if there was an inconvenience to any client, but this was obviously just a mistake.
If I got one of these fares, I think I’d call my credit card company and close the account right away to try to prevent a reverse-chargeback!
Well, if they’ve got the tickets then it’s final & they should fly at the quoted price. If they haven’t got the tickets yet, then the deal has not been completed & can be changed.
As a travel agent, we see “mistake” fares every so often. Someone loads them into the computer incorrectly and *wham!* $30.00 ticket to Europe!
As far as I know, and have experienced, if you book and buy a ticket with one of those fares, they are VALID. I’ve even done it for myself.
I guess the passengers probably booked their tickets through the website, which means that the airline is in control of the tickets… If they had been issued through a travel agent or something, I think the airline would HAVE to honor them.
@bonzombiekitty: I’m supposing you read my first comment only. I elaborated to include the same points you made in my second comment.
@guspaz: Don’t bother posting to this person. If you read his other posts he’s an obvious troll.
Some of his more elagant posts:
* And what would the companies do without profits?
* Meh, I’ll side with the company.
* So many whiners.
* Here’s the deal- there are no victims in either case.
* All the chicken littles are writing about sensationalist titles, and I actually have to agree for once. These titles are pretty dishonest from a journalistic standpoint.
I’m surprised they won’t honor them. In the past I’ve seen airlines like Alaska accidentally load and sell tickets for $17 and they HAD to honor them. To quote the airlines themselves a ticket is a contract…binding…thats their reason for charging penalties to change. On the other hand I would rather the pilots and everyone else get paid and the plane to have enough fuel to cross the ocean so I can see their stance.
@digitalgimpus: Misapplication of laws (bait and switch) is just as bad as corporate fraud.
Some of the people on here are the most ignorant people to have ever touched a keyboard. They should build communities to go back to homespun economies.
@hi: Nice straw-man.
Anyway, what would companies do without profits? People expect BoA to take a loss just to subsidize secondary education? That’s laughable.
And there are no victims in the case of Monster vs Gamespot. Consumers have the right to not purchase their products.
@VikingP77:
Unilateral mistake = enforceable contract, unless the other party knows of the mistake and take advantage of it. Here, the “consumers” clearly knew this was a mistake on the airline’s part. Hence, the contract is not enforceable.
This is different from a situation where you misbook a flight and are forced to pay a fee to change or cancel. The airline has no way to know of your mistake prior to entering into that contract with you, so the contract is enforceable, and the airline can charge the fees to change or cancel.
@Dr. Chim Richolds: How did the consumers “clearly know this was a mistake”?
@Blinkman: I prefer ‘strawberry-man’ thank you.
And I’m sure those people who were ripped off by these companies are completely to blame for trusting a company to be honest with their goods & services.
Sorry, this reminds me of the Simpson’s Ep where Bart gets an African Elephant. After Homer realizes the cost of the elephant and giving everybody $5 rides, he goes around and starts asking people for more money after he increases the price to $250 per ride. Milhouse’s dad actually said it best: ‘Get off our property!”
All they had to do was issue a simple press release to every major news outlet where they have flights to or from: “hey, we screwed up, sorry ’bout that. We’re honoring the 5 Euro tickets but have fixed the problem. We hope that the 100 people who bought 5 Euro tickets enjoy their flight and hopefully they’ll consider flying with us again.”
Simple and to-the-point.
@chrisjames – They should absolutely pay the customers the $100 (or whatever it is) change charge. Better if they allowed the people to fly at that price though…
If I was one of those customers being asked to re-book – um, chargeback? The airline gets nailed for additional costs resulting from the chargeback being intiated (well, mere mortal merchants do, who knows what goes on in the rarefied atmosphere of such big business merchant agreements….)
If im not mistaken, doesnt every seller have a clause which voids any purchase if the price is in error?
The Irish Consumers Association knows European law.
Aer Lingus made a binding offer, a customer entered into a contractual relationship and Aer Lingus confirmed the transaction by accepting payment.
Pays to be careful….
(And Aer Lingus might have to forego 17k Euros revenue, but their costs certainly aren’t that high. It won’t break them)
I’ve just seen the latest news report right now (9.15 pm Irish time) and this is a big story here as you might expect.
Aer Lingus are now going to honour those prices but only in economy, not in the original business class seats that these bookings were for. Not everyone who booked those flights has accepted this, some people are discussing legal action. The general feeling on the various news and opinion programmes is that Aer Lingus are right to offer to to honour the bookings.
The latest twist to this story is that some of these bookings were made by airline staff, their families and friends.
[www.rte.ie]
@Bruce Bayliss: 170k revenue, big difference.
@Bruce Bayliss: isn’t it more like 170,000 euros?
@Steve Trachsel, Ace: doh!
These fare misloads happen all the time, but it’s only the really egregious ones that get noticed.
United has been the victim of a few; when they tried to charge their *intended* price of a Chicago-Paris itinerary to the credit cards of the lucky few who scored them for $29, the customers rightly sicced their credit card companies on the airline.
In the end, United decided to eat the airfares rather than deal with the legal hassles and bad publicity. But United did advise the $29 pax that their seats would not be eligible for upgrades of any sort, and that they would not receive frequent-flyer miles for the trip.
Seems like a fair exchange to me.
My mistake; apparently SFO-CDG, not ORD-CDG.
[budgettravel.about.com]
@Blinkman: So which company are you shilling for?
@Dr. Chim Richolds: And I say to you that the airlines have stood by these “mistake” tickets in the past. So what if the ticket is $5.00? Haven’t we posted before on this site that if the retailer has a sign up for an item that says $10.00 but its really $20.00 when its rung in that the price on the sign or advertisement trumps that?! Seriously its free speech on here but it seems like certain individuals just want to argue with your post or look “smarter”. @whatdoyoucare: Thank you for your enlightened question back to the good Doc. He doesn’t understand airlines.
@BigElectricCat: Thank you! Apparently Doc Chim has never heard of this before!
Check with your lawyers, but a contract is not valid if one party knows that the other party has made a mistake. I actually have a letter filed away with the legal text for it, but can’t find it right now…
I side with both. Mistakes happen. The airway should give them a hefty discount and allow them to keep the tickets. The customers are obviously not going to take this for granted, so I can’t see many angry about paying, say 1000 euros on a 1775 euro flight.
Daniel
I’m constantly amazed companies fuck up on stuff like this. It’s SO simple: you honor the mistake, make 100 people happy, and advertise the hell out of it. You’ll more than make up for the losses by the number of people who’ll hear about your airline AND be inclined to fly you because you clearly have good customer service.
So yeah, they should honor the price. Legalese aside, it’s great PR.
I’ll have to side with the business in this case. Honest price mistakes occur all the time and most online retailers and advertisements have clauses against typographical errors.
If they’re nice, they can keep the price or offer you a discount off your next flight. If not, just suck it up and acknowledge you knew this might happened when you booked a $5 trans-Atlantic flight.
Oh, you say there’s another competitor that offers EVEN lower prices. Then why not just go reorder tickets from that other airline. Obviously there’s some reason keeping you from doing that.
People who bring up the argument if the tickets were overpriced for $3000, would they refund you the difference and my answer would be it should work the same way retailers do.
If an iPod has an MSRP for $300 and Best Buy accidentally lists it for $500, and assuming you as a consumer was stupid enough to purchase it at $500, if Best Buy does eventually fix the price, you can always get the price match within 30 days. You also have the option of refunding it and purchasing it elsewhere.
I understand the price match/refund policies of airlines are quite different and depending on what type of ticket you buy, refunds may be laden with fees or not even refundable.
Then again, if you had opt for a nonrefundable ticket, you must’ve acknowledge there was enough savings from a refundable ticket.
Not to change the subject, but with a name like “Aer Lingus” shouldn’t these guys be having the M.I.L.F. sale?
I try very hard to view mistakes as opportunities. It’s difficult. I also try very hard to accept the consequences of my mistakes. This is also difficult, though carrying insurance helps.
If I were Aer Lingus, I like to think I’d use the opportunity to learn about shortcomings in our systems. I would also try very hard to find a way to honor the fare. That’s a lot of money, and airlines are strapped. Perhaps they really can’t do it. But given the number of free flight vouchers handed out for things like overselling, I suspect it’s affordable. I’d at the very least kiss butt and give out lots of free drinks. Though from what I know (and love) about the Irish, that could cost a great deal as well!
@BigBoat: They baited with a $5 ticket. Now your in, they will pitch their normal fares.
It’s really not different than material goods just because it’s a service.
Once people buy tickets they often book hotels, etc. Some stuff may be hard to cancel… so now people are obligated to fly somehow.
So most who bought will likely need to buy another ticket to prevent loosing more money. The question is what airline.
@davebg5: In all likelihood, they would do what they could to fix your mistake on favorable terms. Once I booked a flight on JetBlue for a Saturday by accident, when I really meant to fly on Sunday. I went to check in online Sunday afternoon and found that I couldn’t. I called JetBlue and of course I couldn’t check in because my flight was really the previous day, and I had missed it. They agreed to honor the Saturday ticket for the Sunday flight, only requiring me to pay the normal $25 change fee. Under the terms of the contract, the Saturday ticket was void because I had no-showed, and they could have made me buy an entirely new ticket.
As long as the airline will throw in something to compensate (I dunno, maybe a voucher for duty free) , I would forgive.
It’s way too cheap to be truth.
What if you were in this situation? Say you were selling your car and you wanted $5000 for it but accidentally listed it at $500; Consumerist readers say you should eat the $4500 and be glad you have good publicity.
Aer Lingus sells tickets for €5 and less (excluding taxes) to lots of European destinations every day, and advertises this fact heavily in every Irish newspaper.
It’s certainly no stretch to argue that someone thought they might also do the same for a transatlantic route too.
As RTE are reporting, the best they can hope for is to move them to coach. Under the law in Ireland (and as others have pointed out, most other EU member countries) there’s no getting out of the contract they agreed to when they took the money and sent a receipt.
@Deadeyereborn: no. They have every right to deny purchase. Hello? Amazon? get with the times.
@Blinkman: “same liberal douches”
Talk about gratuitous insults.
This is a perfect opportunity for some fabulous PR. Airlines make themselves look like a bunch of scumbags and this would be an easy way of showing the public “Hey! We’re human and we mistakes too! lol! 5 Euro tickets!”
@BrentNewland: Okay Genius McGee, I believe what everyone is suggesting is that yeah, if you took $500 and agreed to a contract and sent the buyer a reciept you would be bound to it. But the thing here is, they SOLD the tickets for the money. A normal private seller would just say “oh shit, my bad” before they accepted the money.
Now you can sit the fuck down.
If a customer buys tickets in error, are they offered a full refund? Or is the airline the only party who can break the contract?
@dorianh49: Man I was searching the comments for a pun and you’re the only one! Great job!
It doesn’t matter that it was a mistake. In life we all pay for our mistakes. The airlines are no different. A smart manager, which doesn’t exist in Aer Lingus, should have realized the benefit of just saying, “That’s our mistake but we stand by our ads and our word to the consumer.” But noooo some moron thought that not honoring your ad makes you look good to the consumer. I WILL NEVER FLY AER LINGUS,EVER!!