[TiredOldHack]

And in which country, and under whose legal system, would you do this?

[canucklad]

Urbanegents advice would have been my course of action

However, now that you have contacted them, yoive alerted then to the ” possible” discrepancy

Remember rferguson— you booked this ” very special” trip as an “emotional well being”. Trip because you ” totally love Thailand and its genourous people”

TRIP OF A LIFETIME

[VintageKrug]

I’ve only taken advantage of one “mistake” fare – usually they are too high risk, but the planets aligned on mine and I enjoyed a Business Class trip to the USA for under £250. Not a titter about it from the airline.

Very pleasant it was, too!

[JasonMyers]

I had an issue with Iberia 6 years ago that was disgraceful, at least you have a good chance with Thai because they are generally fair with customers (my experience of over 25 years regularly flying with them). Although I live in Thailand, my son and his mother were living in Florida (after she remarried) and we had planned to spend some time together in Florida and then go visit my parents who had now retired to Spain.

I always travel First or Business and shopped around ofr fares. The easiest connections were via Iberia and that had several specials on their website for business class fares from $2,500 -8,000 (full fare). because of the flights I wanted the fares issued were $3,600 each. All fine, except when I printed out the itinery it did not indicate which class however, i was confident with the booking I had made was definately in Business Class and all would be fine, how wrong can you be?

Upon checking in at iberia’s Business Class check in, I was rudely treated and even insulted, laughed at and accused of trying to get a free upgrade when i had made an economy booking (all untrue). I was very angrybut tried to stay calm, I pointed out that I had paid almost $8,000 on what was advertised as ‘Business Class’ specials and that I could have had the same ‘economy’ flights booked under special fares for less than $800 each, why would I have paid so much? End story resulted in being forced to travel economy or pay another $8,000 to fly business (price on that day) or lose the booking altogether (no refund). I was told if I had an issue, make a complaint in Spain.

Upon arriving at Madrid and trying to complain, no one wanted to know, in the end I was told to write in and complain, I did several times and phoned many times, no one cared or even responded.

I have never been treated so badly by an airline in my life and avoid Iberia as much as possible. i had to use them a couple of years ago when I booked ALC-LIM-ALC via LAN (Business Class x 4) and realised the connection was Iberia! Guess what the Iberia connection on the outward connection in Madrid was 4 hours late and caused us to miss our connecting LAN flight! We were told that someone would meet us at the gate to reschedule our flights (which could have been done easily as there was an Iberia flights leaving 90 mins later)
but no one was at the gate, we went insearch of iberia staff and found a mobbed office, who after serving one person, promptly closed and sent all the waiting passenegers who had missed flights (about 200 pax) to another terminal to join another 300 plus pax with about 3 staff serving. 7 hours later we were in a hotel for 4 hours before having to go back to reconnect which was then further delayed several hours!

[rferguson]

Hey all. Well I promised i’d come back with the result of this ‘mistake fare’ issue.

For those who want to cut to the short of it, Thai are honoring the original booking in J class. After many, many letters and researching online about my rights and a few threats of highlighting their error on the social network sites they agreed to play ball.

At the time of my last post I had written a letter to Thai asking them to honor the reservation I made with Expedia (given that Expedia’s T&C’s explicitly state that my contract is with the airline, not the agent).

Things seemed promising when I had a very prompt reply from Thai saying they are looking into the issue immediately and that they will reply in due course. A week later they did reply. A one paragraph letter laying the blame with Expedia as Thai claimed they loaded the (incorrect) fare codes and referred me to them. This was exactly what I had feared, Thai blaming Expedia for the error and vice versa. And it’s exactly what happened. I then wrote to Expedia asking for them to either honor the J class reservation or offer me a full refund with a ‘gesture of goodwill’ such as credit for future use with Expedia.

Expedia did reply a couple weeks later. And behold, they laid the blame at the feet of Thai. They claimed that Thai had incorrectly labelled the fare class given to them. What’s more (and when panic began to set in) they had spoken to Thai to try and resolve the issue and Thai had refused to provide a J upgrade and (more importantly) a refund at ALL!! Expedia, for their part, offered £50 compensation.

So I began to do my own research online. I found information on laws like ‘the supply or goods and services act 1982’ that requires goods or services to be ‘as described’. Which in this case it was not. I also contacted the Citizens Advice Bureau who offer an AMAZING online service. I had a reply from them which gave me some useful information of how Thai had potentially been in breach of their contract.

So, I wrote to Thai again, advising them that I considered them in breach of contract due to the above act and that I would be lodging complaints with the OFT and Trading standards.

Another two weeks passed. Today, I had a phone call. The rep from Thai now laid the blame at another party – sabre systems. However, as a gesture of goodwill they will be issuing me a new ticket – in J class.

So a lot of stress and angst, but I got there in the end!

[TiredOldHack]

Result. Hope the trip makes it worth it….

[VintageKrug]

Good news, rferguson! Hope to have a trip report from you!

[rferguson]

Thanks guys. And i’ll be sure to do a trip report 🙂

If I saw an obvious mistake fare online in the future would I chance it? Depends. I definitely would NOT if it involves buying the ticket through any other medium other than direct with the airline. I really did get the feeling that Thai would have been a lot more accommodating if I had booked on thai.com and the mistake could only be theirs.

What I was most surprised by was that Thai was not even offering a refund of the ticket, despite the obvious error (whether it be theirs, Expedia’s or Sabre’s). I did initially go into this believing that there was absolutely no question that at the very least I would get my money back.

[BeckyBoop]

Well done. However for me the response is actually very poor. Considering nobody is excepting responsibility and are still playing the blame game. Considering it has taken them almost 2 months to give you a verdict you should of been compensated further!

[TiredOldHack]

I really, really don’t think you can justifiably claim more simply because you’ve been arguing about it. But YMMV.

[BeckyBoop]

Yes you can considering they have messed rferguson around and he has had to go through the trouble to prove each party wrong would be enough to piss anyone off.

[rferguson]

TBH I kind of knew that I would never get a reply from any of those involved saying ‘yes, our mistake we put our hands up’. Working in the industry I was 99% sure that any resolution would be a ‘gesture of goodwill’.

At the end of the day, they know who made the mistake. For me I don’t really care who made it – Thai, Expedia or Sabre. It was most likely some IT worker in a cubicle in Mumbai in the middle of the night that entered the incorrect code. But who/why/how was irrelevant to me. I just wanted what I had paid for. And thankfully I finally got it.

[JohnHarper]

Well done rferguson, it’s always worth sticking to your guns when something like this happens. I won a similar battle today, only over £2 mind you so nothing in comparison but I demand my rights where pricing is concerned!

[Shearer]

Ridiculous buck passing but delighted common sense has prevailed.

I am about to enter battle with Virgin, over their H class fares which are listed as ‘upgradeable’ on their website and actually are not.

[TiredOldHack]

BeckyBoop: company makes error, dispute starts, company admits error, status quo restored. If people wanted compensation for every time a mistake was made, the world would grind to a halt.

But, unfortunately, there are people who do indeed so demand. Every time I hear some chav on the TV news saying: “I waz twaumatized!” I mentally mutter: “Another compensation claim about to start.”

[Author]

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