Hey Southwest, if this isn’t bait-and-switch then why does it feel that way?

Westjet in Canada does show seat availability on its website when booking a flight when there are a few seats left at a special sale fare. It is very helpful and does help one to make up ones mind faster about whether to buy the flight or not.

That seems to happen all too frequently, even when you know what you want and click immediately. You come back to your computer an hour later and the less expensive fare is still showing up. I would think there would be capability in the computer system to update it immediately.

And… did you go back and try again? Perhaps this time with Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, or on a different computer (so there are no ‘cookies’)?

Chris, what about this idea:
Airline/hotel websites must run ticket purchases that way ticketmaster does. In other words you get the little 2 minute counter that you need to complete the information on that page or you lose that rate/seat and have to start over.
This would gty the customer they get what they saw, while at the same time allowing the natural fluctuation that exists in these systems.
It is amazing to me that if I walk into a brick and mortar and pick up an item that is mis-priced (while not the law) most retail stores will honor the mispriced item as to honor their “mistake”. This does not happen with the airlines and they are able to hide behind their “imponderable yield-management software”
Happy holidays!

I’m a loyal Southwest customer who has booked many flights on Southwest and never experienced the problem that Chris encountered. Up to now, they have never stooped to the level of some legacy carriers and played the bait and switch game. I hope that this incident was a computer error and not the start of a new policy at Southwest.

Ted – Phoenix Justice: I have always thought that Expedia showed the “number of seats available at this price” as a way of pushing their customers to make a purchase decision. I have look at flights from Tampa to Kansas City for a mid-July trip six months prior to the departure date and have had the message “only four seats available at this price” appear. That is ridiculous. the demand for seats between Kansas City and Tampa in the summer is very low.

You want a horror story? Here’s one for you…

I was flying on Delta from ATL to DFW with a group of students for competition. I had a travel agent (brick and mortar) do all of the arrangements. Since there were so many tickets and all were minors, I thought this was a smart move. I also had one student who was Autistic and needed to be seated with me because he gets nervous on planes. The others would be fine to be seated separately. She contacted Delta about this and made our reservations and all was well on the trip over.

Coming back…that’s where the problems started.

We checked in at the ticket counter and realized that myself and that student were not seated together–in fact, he wasn’t seated with anyone in our group. I asked the ticket agent to change the seats, explaining the situation. The ticket agent told me I’d have to take it up with the gate agent. I told him this was a matter of a student with a legitimate disability and that I felt he needed to deal with it. He said, “I’m on break for the next 30 minutes. Go to the gate.”

GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE, DELTA!!!

So, I went to the gate. There was no gate agent there yet, even though the flight was scheduled to leave in an hour. I stood there and waited. When one finally showed up, he was a callous, rude fellow who told me he had to “get ready for the arrival before he dealt with me.” So, I waited.

In the meantime, I called the travel agent. Travel agent apparently forgot to mention she didn’t work on Saturdays. I left a ton of messages pleading for help. She charged me a $50 service charge on all the tickets but couldn’t be bothered to answer the phone? NEVER AGAIN.

Next I called Delta and told them the situation. They told me to talk to the gate agent. I said I was trying to but he was ignoring me.

Finally, he says he can “deal” with me now. I told him the problem. He said, “Just switch seats on board.” I explained that I didn’t want to chance someone not wanting to switch with me. He sighs and shouts to the gate, “Anyone volunteer to switch seats so this retard can sit next to his teacher?”

YES HE ACTUALLY SAID THAT ABOUT MY STUDENT IN FRONT OF EVERYONE!!!!

I told him that was completely inappropriate. He shrugged and asked what he should have done. I said, “Look in the computer and find two people you can switch.”

He said he didn’t have time. Now, I was being as polite as I could with this idiot, so his rudeness was really uncalled for. I’m not a “seasoned” traveler, but I’m certain that Delta can do better in it’s hiring.

I even had a few businessmen on the flight come up to me and hand me their business cards telling me if I wanted to report this idiot they would be witnesses to the atrocious behavior. I did, but of course, Delta doesn’t care. They didn’t even answer my email! I just got a form letter.

Then, to add insult to injury, when we were ready to board, my autistic student started to get ansty. I asked Mr. Gate Agent if I could board out of zone with him to get him settled. Mr. Gate Agent said no. He said the student could board in Zone 4 but I had to wait until Zone 8. So, we both had to wait until Zone 8. Fortunately, a few of my students who had gotten on ahead (since Delta could not be bothered to even put us all in the same zone) secured two seats together for this kid and I.

I don’t want anything from Delta other than an apology for this man’s disgusting behavior.

On the good side, if Southwest does drop the price on the ticket you purchased, they make it really easy to get a refund – even if the price only drops $10 or so. Granted the refund is a credit, but if you fly Southwest a couple times a year it is easy to use.

@Shawn, I think the 2 minute timer on airline prices is a great idea. That would eliminate a lot of confusion, I think. Although, the airlines could probably find a way to mess up even that. Still a good idea, though.
@K.A., that gate agent was a toad. Only that’s an insult to toads. What a first-class, gold-plated, CREEP! They should have creep papers on him. He’s certified.
Chris has some e-mails for customer service supervisors here on the Web site. Let me encourage you to send them a polite message, and remember to mention several business travelers gave you their cards as witnesses.

K.A.- That is an awful story. You did everything you could do. Kudos to your other kids on the plane for doing what the GA should have done. I would definitely contact Delta through one of Chris’ priority contacts. There are some hyperlinks in the upper left corner of the window or click on:
http://www.elliott.org/help/delta-air-lines/

As Chicky said, make sure you list each and every person’s name who volunteered to serve as a witness. This guy needs to be retrained or shown the door. Make sure to keep your complaint to the point and mention some things, if any, Delta did right for the trip. That way it doesn’t come off like you’re a whiner (not that you are but customer service people perceive people like that). Good luck to you! And $50 per ticket is outrageous.

The two minute rule unfortunately makes no sense with airlines. Thieatre tickets are easy. You have a big venue often thousands of seats, with few showings per day, and most importantly, static pricing.

Airline seats are far harder. Any given plane has a couple hundred deats maximum, with multiple price structures, multiple flights daily, and dynamic pricing. A held seat might increase in price while being held; something that doesn’t happen with theatre tickets.

Shouldn’t the airlines be able to do like Ticketmaster and LiveNation and other dastardly monopolies do? When I try to buy a concert ticket, and there are a fixed number of tickets at a fixed price, I am given a counter on the screen that tells me how long I have to buy the ticket at that price before it is released to another customer. So it’s not like the technology doesn’t exist, they just don’t care enough to implement it.

they just don’t care enough to implement it.

Or maybe because not “enough” people tell Southwest they want that? If Southwest/Southworst is like certain companies, they prioritize their changes/upgrades/etc. based on what a “critical number” of their customers tell them.

On the side, I’ve seen that happen with various airlines’, hotels’, or travel agencies’ sites. They’re all in “good” company, sheesh.

@John Hartness

Airlines, unlike concerts don’t have fixed numbers of ticketrs for a fixed price. Its not the same technology at all.

Hey KA – I’m a lawyer – a labor / disability lawyer / represent parents of disabled kids, and the parent of a highly functioning autistic teen.

This is a clear violation of ADA. Do NOT complain to Delta. If 180/365 days have not elapsed yet – please – ask Chris Elliott for my contact information and we’ll file a complaint with the appropriate state / federal agencies and courts and obtain the appropriate discipline of the employee involved together with an agreement from Delta to not violate the law in the future. Plus we’ll get the ticket price refunded. Then we’ll have a chat with the travel agent’s supervisory staff.

You cannot in good conscience expect a travel agent to expect the airline employees to actively violate the law and corporate policy, and they should tell you their hours and times they answer the phone and deal with issues, but they should, if they do lots of work, have inside lines to the airline customer service supervisors to contact people to deal with these issues.

Step #1 is to contact the gentlemen who handed out business cards and ask what they know. Get their statements and then file a complaint with those statements – give Delta no ability to ever regain the high ground. Pound this gate agent into the ground so they never work a flight again.

I have ALWAYS found the airlines more than helpful, like Disney, when it comes to accommodating disabilities, especially in kids. This type of horrific display of insensitivity needs to be quashed immediately. As Chris says alot – the issue is to contact someone with the power to do something about. I tend to practice realistically, and have the case nailed down before I file a complaint. This makes settling it so easy.

@Joe

Before becoming an attorney I was an engineer writing computer programs large enterprises such as NASA so I understand a thing or too about programming. And much of my practice relates to the purchase and sale of intellectual property since I am located in Silicon Valley.

Your question is a good one, but it fails to appreciate the distinction between dynamic and static pricing. This distinction relates both to the technical reqiurements as well as the financial ones.

Ticketmaster has hundred and thousands of venues, etc. But they are each relatively independent venues. There are no predictive algorithms; no prices which change relative to other purchases. For the techies: Ticketmaster events represents a sequence of independent events, i.e. what happens at Theatre 1 does not affect any prices at Theatre 2. So from a programming perspective its not really a big number since the events are not interrelated.

Equally important, the price of tickets remains the same regardless of how many tickets are sold or the speed in which they are sold. Consider a simplied example: If the Pantages is selling tickets to Wicked for this upcoming Tuesday (Excellent show) and makes two classes of tickets available, say 1000 floor tickets at $90 and 1000 balcony tickets at $70. Regardless of how many or how fast the floor tickets are sold, they will always be $90 and the balcony tickets will be $70. So its not a big deal to allow you to hold a balcony ticket for five minutes because whether you buy the ticket or not, it remains $70. There is no chance that its going to jump to $150.

Whereas if the theatre were to use dynamic pricing, the computer would have to be concerned with the number of floor seats sold, the number of balcony seats sold, as well as the number of tickets sold for shows on the surrounding days and the speed in which those tickets are being sold. It would also have to be concerned with tickets being sold at competing venues, i.g. geographically local theatres catering to a similar demographic.

Based upon this information, the ticket price may increase or decrease at any moment.

I would suggest that airline pricing is akin to stock market pricing. Expecting to be able to hold a ticket for 5 min would be akin to being able to hold a stock purchase for 5 min while you decide. Doesn’t happen.

I’ve found the airline sites to be much better than the 3rd party agency websites, where I almost always get “The lowest fare has increased” when I select a flight, especially for any sort of busy time. And I don’t need the prices to be updated real-time, but yes, something like United’s site where they have “Only 3 seats left at this price” along with a hover that shows the actual availability in each fare class (up to 9) should be universal.

Now if we could only get them to only show the “real” price on that first screen, not the price before fees/surcharges/taxes (United used to show that, but apparently changed to compete with the other airlines’ lowball quotes), life would be much better.

There is at least a good explanation for the fare going from $100 to $200 — both of those have the same restrictions, so there’d be no reason for someone to want to book the $200 fare over the $100 or $400 (with fewer restrictions)…until the $100 one was sold out.

The airline web site needs to do for the customer what is known as “claiming” the seats. Apparently travel agents and the airline’s own booking agents can do this on their computer terminals.

If you don’t type in your name and credit card information in a reasonable length of time (much more than two minutes) or (sorry) if your modem connection breaks accidentally, the seats are returned to inventory.

And the system should tell you in advance if the seats got claimed by someone else after you chose your dates and flights but before you got to the page wher eyou fill in your name and credit card.