Thats depends did the people who bought the tickets call no trade backs upon said purchase?

If the tickets were supposed to be 1775 Euros and the customers paid 2500, would the airline refund them the price? They can't have it both ways.

@Deadeyereborn: I loled at work...thanks...!

And I think they should hold to the price. Their screw up oh well life goes on. Put those 100 people on their flight and take the cut.

I think those people deserve their damned tickets, regardless of the amount of the error.

Meh, I'll side with the company. It wasn't like the BMW fiasco. It was a legit error. Just remember that someone, somewhere has to pay for selling $5 tickets if people get to fly on them. The same liberal douches that cry on here constantly would also react the same way to "Aer Lingus cuts back incentive plans."

This happens a lot more than one would think. Check out www.flyertalk.com for more incidents like this. The price is NOT that unreasonable considering another Irish Airline sells tickets for less... I say honor (or in this case honour) it

Legally, I do not think they have to honor that price. Generally you're not under an obligation to honor sales that were clearly an error. It would be nice if they would, or at least give a nice discount as a sign of good faith, but I do not think there's any obligation to do so.

@CRNewsom: Then neither can the customer. Suppose there was an error that made the price higher than it should actually be, and consumers found out about it. They'd be screaming for a discount.

Is there a reasonable person who thinks it was a simple mistake?

5 Euros for a transatlantic ticket is clearly not just a sale price...its a mistake.

@APFPilot: Are you referring to Ryan Air? Ryan Air does not do transatlantic flights and is a low cost, no frills airline. It's a bus with wings. That is not comparable to Aer Lingus.

@APFPilot:
Another Irish airline sells transatlantic flights for less than 5 Euros?

@CRNewsom: Not exactly the same thing, but when I booked a trip to Bali, I messed up the return date because of the time change (my fault), so changed my ticket and got an $800 refund from American.

I think the company should honor the 5 euro tickets - they sold them, and it would give them great goodwill.

@Blinkman: Consumers should not pay for company error thats final. If the price was advertised and purchased the ticket should be delivered. You cant say "oops that thing you bought was really 100 dollars more expensive give it back or pay the differance." This could have been handled alot better by the company. They could have spun it into a promotion or made a weekly "5 euro ticket" prize out of the whole thing. Instead they end up looking like asses.

@Blinkman: Stop using the word "liberal" like it's derogatory. It makes you look like a bigot, calling half the population of Canada "douches".

Is this airline owned by Colonel Angus?

I think I smell a disgruntled employee on his last day of work somewhere in this.

If they take the tickets back I say they should have to remove the cloverleaf on their planes.

@hilighter & bonzombiekitty: That's the point I was trying to make. The company needs to have a policy for the scenario of an egregious error. Whether that policy be that the ticket is void and the passenger is permitted to rebook or the ticket is valid.

I support honoring the ticket. If you paid extra for a ticket in error, you knew the price you were paying for the ticket. Forcing them to rebook (at normal fare) for this error is a disservice to their loyal customers.

If I was booking a flight online and chose the wrong date or destination "in error" would an airline allow me to re-book without paying a penalty?

I think not.

@Amiga_500

No, he died and gave it to the last surviving Lingus heir...Conny...

I'm with Aer Lingus here. The 5 Euro pricing was clearly a mistake. If they charged 1500, and meant to charge 1700, tough luck, but that isn't the case here.

Yeah, if I had booked one of those 5 Euro tickets, I would be bummed, but not up in arms about it.

As long as Aer Lingus lets them re-book without taking away their advance booking discount, I don't see anything wrong.

SirWired

@CRNewsom: I was fine with the original price I paid for the ticket, but when I realized (a few months later) that I had booked the wrong return date, the price had evidently changed. I had no idea...they just sent me a check. It paid for a lot of my honeymoon...Bali is really inexpensive.

How many times on this site do you find the shoe on the other foot? Sears sells someone an installation contract along with a water heater and then doesn't perform, consumer is stuck! Cable cut off because the guy had to move a truck, consumer is stuck! The value of your house is down because the banks needed lax regulations, consumer is stuck! Gimme them their $5 tickets, damnit

Basically, you paid for a service. The company has decided not to provide the service, and has refunded your money. I don`t see the big deal - had they overcharged you, you`d want your money back, it only makes sense that the reverse be true.

Can the customers charge the airline a $100 rebooking fee for correcting their mistake? If so, then it sounds fair to me. If not, then why the fuck do we have to pay extra when we screw up but not the airlines?!

Double-fucking-standard!

I think it would have been better PR to honour the tickets, release a Press Release saying "we screwed up, we're sorry but we're honouring the 100 tickets already sold" and everything would have been good. Alternatively, they could have said whoops, but we'll rebook you with a 50% discount on the normal price. Still happy customers.

Now they're saddled with bad PR and 100 unhappy customers.

If it was over a website, many websites has in fine print that they are not responisble for pricing errors - and in a case like it, it was pretty obvious.

If it was a different way, like me calling them over the phone and they made the offer and I accepted, but I think they should be held to it.

If anything, I would hope the airline would at least offer a good discount for the hopefully honest mistake.

Aer Lingus is not so cunning.

I'll have to side with the company on this one. Same with gas. When people see that a station set the gas as "$0.039", they flock to the station and pump. The clerks don't realize until it's too late. Most people dumb enough to use a credit card often are arrested for petty theft. (at least around here)

A mistake is a mistake.

I am with the company on this one.

How is this hurting the customers? It sounds like they realized this pretty quickly, and informed the customers. They aren't FORCED to rebook, they could just NOT fly.

Granted, there is a case by case basis here...if someone booked a non-refundable hotel room based on the ticket, then perhaps they could be compensated for that.

But this isn't really hurting the customers.

I think it's lawyer time!

What is the fine print about Aer Lingus deciding to cancel the contract?

I prefer to see Aer Lingus live with their error, or settle on a dramatically reduced price. That would be my lawyer's instructions: get me a good buy-out of the contract.

Well, given the weak dollar, these prices are still way too high for me to go overseas.

I think people are confused. Generally you are not obligated to honor ads that are pricing errors. However once money changes hands, its a done deal. A signed contract can't be undone. I guess it comes down to if the airline charged their cards or not.

@Geminijinx07: You're over-estimating the amount of bad PR that comes about from something as small as this.

@coan_net: Well said. Agreed.

I'm with the company on this one. Partly because having worked retail, I found few things in life more annoying than the "Gotcha!" customers, who would pounce on even the most obvious pricing errors and claim we had a legal obligation to sell it to them at that price (we didn't), but mostly because stuff like this distracts from real consumer problems.

So long as there are so many instances of greedy executives, indifferent customer service, and general corporate douchebaggery in the world, it's hard to get too worked up over someone's innocent mistake.

It's an issue of legality and I'm pretty sure that as soon as payment changes hands, the contract of sale is official and legally binding.

@bonzombiekitty: @ThomFabian:I know all about FR, but who is to say that a consumer couldn't have seen this as an attempt to combat MOL's pricing?

Basic contract law says they don't have to honor it. Basic contract law kind of sucks that way.

[en.wikipedia.org])

Mistake in Contract Law

Bank error in your favor, collect $50

People are deffinately missing the point here, this isn't a dispute over advertised prices, it's a contract dispute. Advertisements are typically not contracts, implied or otherwise, unless they're calculated to deceive.

The airline did, however, breach the contract they entered when they made the transaction official.

But sicne the airline made a mistake any sensible person would recognize as a mistake, they might have a case in court. "[under contract law,] A unilateral mistake is where only one party to a contract is mistaken as to the terms or subject-matter. The courts will uphold such a contract unless it was determined that the non-mistaken party was aware of the mistake and tried to take advantage of the mistake."

@APFPilot: In what way would it be combating low cost no frills, non-transatlantic airlines?

The two are not comparable and serving entirely different market.

@Claystil: Yes, it is a contract dispute. And generally contracts do not have to be honored if there is clearly a mistake in them, ESPECIALLY if there's no direct human involvement with one side of the contract i.e. an automated system on a website. There's no person there to ensure that the contract is correct before closing on it.

@bonzombiekitty: Edit to that. Sorry Claystil, I didn't read your entire post. My bad.

We need an edit button.

@pmathews: Am I the only one who got that?! That was the funniest post ever.

they should eat the profit on the 100 tickets.

are they in that bad a shape that the positive PR on this wouldn't be worth more than the negative PR to them?

I mean really, it's what, a third of the capacity of a full A330 (295 passengers per flight), and yeah it's a ton of money to lose out on on their part, but it seems to make much better sense to at least offer a half off ticket price for them if not a full fare for 5 euros... they're making at least 100 less passengers that are known customers less likely to fly them again next time at full fare prices...seems like worse business than just saying "whoops! we screwed up. next time it won't happen but enjoy your flight!"

I'd say give the company the choice:

- Honor
- Pay appropriate fine for Switch & Bait

Seems fair.