It’s little different and I don’t know if it’s enforced but I recall getting discounted or free rooms in casino hotels with one of the conditions being that if I don’t gamble enough they will charge me more.
But you’re not checking out early, you’re still paying the full price. You’re just not using the hotel room for the last 3 nights.
ETA: Never mind. You’re just coming up with more and more ridiculous “analogies” to defend an industry that will sell your seat out from under you via overbooking, but will also punish you if you decide not to use the seat you paid for.
There are also Chinese hot pot restaurants that offer an all-you-can-eat deal but charge an extra fee if you don’t finish all the food you’ve ordered.
I would say the customer is legally obligated to pay according to the terms of the service contract, whether that’s $150 or $200 for the two-night stay. My point is simply that (whether we’re talking about airfare, hotels, or pretty much anything else) it’s unreasonable for a consumer to contract for a specific service at a specific price, then attempt to change the terms of the deal with an expectation that the price was not subject to those original terms.
Yes, the marketplace can be weird (i.e., counter intuitive). But so are people. I’m aware of a situation where a family member who is a medical provider had to deal with an upset patient who couldn’t fathom why their no-show (cancellation) fee cost them more out of pocket than their copay had they shown for the visit. Explaining to the patient that (1) their insurance provider doesn’t cover no-show fees, and (2) the no-show fee is greater than their copay on an actual visit was apparently futile.
Their refrain: “But it makes no sense that it’s more expensive for me not to show than to show?”
It’s virtually unique to have a service where services A-B plus B-C is not the same as service A-C, and A-C might be lower price than either A-B or B-C. Transportation where you can stop and get off in the middle is a different service than transportation where you can’t.
One similar service that comes to mind is tree cutting. I’ll cut down your tree and cart it away for $1,000, but I want more than $1,000 to cut it down and leave it there, because the wood is valuable. Even though taking away the wood is a service, and a service you may very well have to pay for if you take the “leave it there” option, splitting the services doesn’t guarantee a lower price for the cut down only service.
Ha! 
I have disagreements with certain airline industry practices. They’re expectation that customers will adhere to the terms of a contract is not among them.
When I went to the cardiologist who put in my stent for a recheck the receptionist was puzzled about my copay, which was more than I would be charged if I walked in without insurance. I asked if I could just be seen as an uninsured individual, but they could not do that. Another worker came over and said she’d encountered this before and it was weird.
I’ve heard of similar occurrences with prescription medications but not for visits. Weird indeed. I suppose results like that are inevitable in complex systems with numerous insurance carriers negotiating rates with multiple providers. Law of large numbers and all that.
I suppose what is “fair” is if someone books say a JFK to DFW to LAX ticket, intending to get off at DFW because it’s cheaper, then maybe they should get charged the greater JFK to DFW fare?
I’m not really thinking of the poor airlines getting screwed. But the airlines do work pretty hard to make sure their flights are full, so there might be some guy who couldn’t get a DFW to LAX flight because the system thinks the flight is full.
Ultimately gaming the system ends up inconveniencing everyone because it prevents the system from accurately forecasting things like capacity and demand.
Also how does that work for the return trip? Do you buy a one way JFK/DFW/LAX ticket and a one way LAX/DFW ticket? Or maybe LAX/DFW/BOS and get off at DFW?
The airlines have gotten really really good at optimizing charging the maximum fee each customer will pay. At the grocery store, every 24oz package of Cheetos has the same price. On an airplane, it’s possible for every seat to have a different price.
So there’s going to be lots of unintuitive pricing.
The prescription issue is weird because those are dictated by the pharmacy benefit manager/insurance company - and often, the pharmacy is expected to send the excess the the PBM.
I’ve never heard of it for doctor’s visits but it’s also kind of incomprehensible to me that a copay would be more than a doctor’s visit would cost. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a copay more than $30 and I haven’t seen the fee for an office visit that low in years , which makes me wonder if we aren’t talking about a copay, but rather insurance that covers 80% of what the company thinks is a reasonable charge, possibly after a deductible. Which sometimes does make sense - maybe the doctor can afford to charge the uninsured patients that lower rate because they gets more for the insured patients.
And when i have purchased drugs that cost less than the copay, the pharmacy has always been happy to charge me directly, and not go through my insurance. I’ve seen that with both maternity vitamins and antibiotics.
Now you are getting into the bizarre world of medical pricing. Where airlines attempt to be ruthlessly efficient at calculating the exact price each customer is willing to pay for each seat on the airplane, for all intents and purposes the price of medical services appears to be created by a random number generator.
I looked at my last doctors bill. There was some lab work and whatnot but the charges sent to the insurance company amounted to over $400. I was responsible for the $30 copay and insurance covered the rest, but I have no idea who comes up with these numbers or how.
Mrs Cad uses a drug that is cheaper for her to pay out of pocket than her fraction of the insurance-covered cost.
Apropos of this thread….If Air Travel Worked Like Health Care
My copay for the cardiology recheck was $140. I think it was in part due to me going to the doctor’s satellite office which was closer to my home instead of going to the hospital where the original surgery was performed.
The appointment total was $210, but included many incidentals if warranted. I didn’t need an EKG so it wasn’t done. The doctor asked about pain, I said I had none, he listened to my chest for 30 seconds. I was fine. The receptionist told me that an uninsured person would be charged $80 for the visit.
This was all 7-ish years ago and I have not returned, but my heart continues to work fine.
I buy my anti-hypertensives out of pocket from a Canadian pharmacy. Including postage, my cost is less for a 6 month supply than a two week supply purchased locally.
Absolutely some pharmacists do that - but some of those benefit managers have gag clauses in the contracts and I’m sure some independent pharmacies can’t afford to lose the contract.
My mom used to buy a steroid out of pocket from a Canadian pharmacy. She started doing it because the drug hadn’t been approved in the US, but her doctor thought she might have fewer side effects with it than with the cortisone-type steroids available in the US. (At the time, it was approved in all of the EU, in Canada and Mexico, in Israel, Japan, and Australia. My rant about the FDA probably belongs in the pit, not here.) It turns out it’s legal to import drugs for personal use that are neither approved nor restricted in the US. The Canadian pharmacy switched her to dealing directly with their Indian supplier. Every six months she’d call them and renew the prescription, and give them her credit card info.
Then, her doctor told her he had some bad news. The drug had been approved in the US, and the price in the US was 50 times as high as what she’d been paying. (That’s not a typo.) But because it was now approved, it was no longer legal to buy it overseas. But, he continued, if she was lucky, the overseas vendor might not realize or care, and she might be able to continue, if she was willing to do so. She kept buying the drugs overseas.
Anyway, yes, healthcare costs are even weirder and less fair than airline costs. That’s an extremely low bar, and not one that’s going to make anyone feel warm and fuzzy about how airlines charge for seats.