Corporations want to convince customers they deserve to be treated like dirt. And judging by this thread, a lot of people have accepted this.
Are you saying that the power imbalance makes it justified for consumers to game the system? I find it more likely that the power imbalance means that, if enough customers game the system, the system will be changed to prevent this, in ways that may make things worse overall for consumers.
Not quite. If the airline can fly a two-leg flight for $200, then surely it’s artificial to charge someone $500 for just the first leg.
But yeah, I hear what people are saying about “what the market will bear” and that’s all fine and dandy. But the airlines should not get all uppity when someone exploits a flaw in their system.
Who is getting taken advantage of?
When I put in where I’m going and when I’m going, I get presented with a variety of options with prices. This is just a loophole to try and get a lower price. There’s nothing particularly coercive about “buy tickets for the trip you actually intend to take”, in a terms and conditions clause.
The problem with this particular loophole isn’t that it’s mean to the poor little airlines, it’s that permitting it means everyone will do it. Everyone will do it means the airlines will close the loophole. Closing the loophole means no one will do it, but air travel will be fucked up for those impacted by the loophole closing changes that were implemented.
The airline can put a passenger on for <$200 because other passengers are paying $500.
Just because they can fly a two-leg flight for $200, that doesn’t mean they can fly all two-leg flights for $200. It seems to me that your logic could be applied to any seller who ever offers any kind of discount or sale price: if they can afford to offer that sale price, then it’s “artificial” or unfair for them ever to charge a higher price.
(The issue was also raised earlier in the thread that the two-leg flight to a smaller airport may have been subsidized. I don’t know whether that’s true, but if it is, it’s the $200 price that’s artificial.)
The power imbalance is what makes it possible for corporations to define acting in their best interest as good capitalism while defining customers acting in their best interest as gaming the system. The power imbalance is what makes it possible for corporations to claim its customers agreed to a contract by buying a ticket but make it a joke when a customer claims the corporation agrees to a contract when by selling a ticket. And the power imbalance is what allows corporations to convince customers that this power imbalance is the way things should be and that suggesting otherwise is class warfare.
When you find yourself arguing that it’s okay for corporation to treat you unfairly ask yourself who put that belief into your head.
Do you mean the customer contract you just made up for this debate?
As opposed to the airline contract you were given the option to read before clicking “Yes I agree to follow the contract as defined in the document I didn’t read”.
That’s how they get you, by putting a contract in front of you and asking you to agree to it. What devious bastards!
I can’t believe we accept that and don’t accept your made up contract that nobody agreed to.
This isn’t really much different than a store offering a loss-leader item on sale, but limiting it to 1 per customer. The intent by offering a artificially discounted, unprofitable product is to make it up with other customer purchases of profitable items, hence the “1 per customer” restriction is needed to avoid someone coming in to snap up the entire inventory of sale items and reselling elsewhere.
If I come in and buy one and nothing else, and then leave (defeating the purpose of the sale), the store manager likely shrugs - the amount of people likely going through the annoyance of going to the store just for a single discounted item was baked into the sale price to begin with.
If I come in demanding to buy 100 and then raising a stink about it when the clerk tells me no, the manager may kick me out of the store and ask me to not return.
If I come in with a busload of 100 confederates each buying a single sale item and then getting back on the bus, the manager may blacklist everyone the next time the bus shows up for a similar sale.
If the manager does neither of those things because it’s not worth the hassle, the loss-leader sales may just be cancelled instead. Business may dry up as regular customers go to different stores.
Yes, airline pricing is different than a store, - Passengers (especially business travelers) put a premium on direct spoke-hub flights to major destinations and less on spoke-hub-spoke routes (the “bigger” more expensive product is counterintuitively worth less) , and the airlines try to price accordingly, selling as many premium seats as possible at premium pricing, and then filling the rest of the plane with discounted rates. If they don’t pack the plane this way, the route likely isn’t going to be profitable, and the airline is forced to cancel it.
But its also much easier now for a whole “bus load of confederates” to just use a travel website and buy up all the premium spoke-hub seats at spoke-hub-spoke pricing, and then automatically cancel the last leg. No bus needs to be arranged, no one has to actually walk through the store aisles to pay. Inevitably, either the “manager” needs to take steps to prevent it (Put in in their terms and conditions, take legal action against travel websites that advertise it, blacklist customers that abuse it) or stop offering discounted spoke-hub-spoke rates, and cancel routes.
Here’s an experiment; the next time you’re at the airport checking in, present the airline rep with a copy of your contract and ask them to sign agreement on behalf of their employer. See how far that gets you.
I don’t think any airline could suss out my IRL identity, so I’ll mention something I did that cost them some money.
I had to go to Philadelphia (from Pittsburgh) one weekend. I figured I’d drive 90 minutes to the airport, fly to Philadelphia, then rent a car for the day.
I ended up instead driving my car from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, saving on the airline ticket and the rental car. Plus gas was cheap back when this occurred. But, yeah, my one little hack cost the airlines big bucks.
Or the time someone took advantage of parcel post rates to send an entire building* through the mail, brick by brick:
*actually just the exterior, but still…
This is a real difference.
There are lots of examples of mildly selfish behavior that is harmless enough when a tiny minority does it. Each of us has our little favorite ways of sticking it to The Man, but all of us aren’t doing all of them all of the time. Or even most of us doing most of it most of the time.
I recall a fascinating debate we had on the ethicality of taking the newest milk from the back of the refrigerator case rather than the sooner-dated milk from the front. While the stores are deliberately loading the shelves in FIFO order to encourage taking the older stuff first.
The usual argument on one side is/was “What if everybody did it?” To which the rejoinder is/was “But everybody won’t be doing it. Just a tiny minority (including me) and that’s a mere pimple on the elephant. No harm no foul.”
What has changed in many ways in the last ~10-15 years is that the “cheat codes” for whatever situation don’t stay closely held to a few creative scammers or insiders. If they’re valuable, they end up publicized via internet / social media and darn near everyone knows about them. Which in turn increases the victim organization’s incentives to somehow disable the “cheat code”. Which in turn often makes things worse for everyone.
The value of limited distribution coupons goes way down when they can be reproduced at will off a coupon-sharing website. Businesses’ natural reaction is to reduce the number or value of coupons they create. etc. The party quickly gets a lot funner … until the punchbowl is taken away.
Yes, I will do that right after the airline presents me with a copy of their contract and asks me to sign it.
What’s that? The airline doesn’t give you a copy of the contract you’re agreeing to? And it doesn’t inform you that the contract exists and that you’re agreeing to it by buying a ticket?
In that case, I don’t see why the airline can complain that I do the same.
Let me guess. You’re fuming right now about how Little Nemo thinks he can do the same thing a corporation does. Doesn’t he understand there’s a different set of rules for corporations? And how dare he claim that there’s a power imbalance!
Their terms of service (carriage) are printed on their tickets and receipts IIRC.
I’m not sure how you buy airline tickets, make hotel reservations etc - but when I do it online , there’s always a box where I agree to the terms and conditions and I can always print myself a copy.
No, it’s very different. If the store limits the sale of its loss leader to one per customer than all I can buy is one. If I argue I want to buy a hundred, I’m wrong.
You note that when a store sets a loss leader price on an object, its intent is that I come in, buy the one loss leader item, and then buy other items as well. That’s fine. Because as you note, if I choose not to buy other items, the store keeper just shrugs and lets me leave the store without any penalty.
What the airlines are doing is refusing to accept that you’re just buying the loss leader. They’re claiming that if you buy the loss leader there’s a hidden contract to buy other items. They’re seeking to penalize customers for buying the loss leader they’re selling.
Really? That must make it difficult to carry those tickets around.
Let’s take United Airlines Contract of Carriage as an example; it’s sixty-seven pages long. I’m pretty sure I’d remember if I was ever handed a document that size when I bought a ticket.
Not buying that if airlines stopped making a fuss about “skiplagging”, everyone would do it.
More than currently, sure. Hardly everyone.
But as I mentioned, there is a built in disincentive for a customer to abuse a loss-leader in a store- you usually have to physically travel to the store, park, walk through the aisles to get the item (usually in the back of the store), walk back through the aisles, and pay, all to save $1.25 on a gallon of milk. Lots of people walking in intending to “abuse” the sale end up impulse buying something else on their way out. The manager can probably accurately predict the % of people jumping through all those hurdles just to abuse the sale, and its likely low enough to be in the noise level.
There’s no such disincentive for Travelocity (or whoever) to automatically show you the discounted spoke-hub-spoke rate every time you search for spoke-hub tickets and insta-save $99, unless the airline tells them it’s against their terms.