They come after dark, without warning. They offer incredible bargains. They scare me.
Last night there was one from Expedia saying, “Dear Christopher, the holidays are coming…and no, it’s not too late to find great travel deals.” What kind of deals? How about round-trip flights starting at $92, or 15 percent off on all ATA flights, or (I’m not making this up) one last chance to “ski for free”?
Not to be outdone by their West Coast competitors, my good friends at Orbitz sent me the following note the same evening: “Hello Christopher, it’s not too late to make your holiday travel plans. To take advantage of this offer, just book on Orbitz and start saving!” Among the bargains: round-trip airfares from Atlanta to Nashville for $108, Dallas to San Francisco for $208, Washington to Salt Lake City for $228. Just to make sure I got it, Orbitz sent me the e-mail twice.
Strictly speaking, these messages aren’t spam because at some point I signed up as an Expedia or Orbitz user. If my memory serves correctly, then there was a tiny box at the bottom of the screen next to a question in a microscopic font size that asked if I wanted to receive “periodic” updates and special fare offers. For my own convenience, that box was already checked.
Since the screen was shown to me late in the registration process, and I was already growing impatient with the website, I glossed over it like many other users surely do. So the notes qualify as what I’d call “solicited” spam, which is to say I asked for them without really knowing that I did.
My problem with this kind of solicited spam – the reason I’m frightened by it – is that it paints a simplistic picture of the fare specials that are offered on the sites. Unless you know about the kind of limits that airfares booked through a website can come with, you might end up paying a lot more money than you expected for your ticket or, in extreme cases, losing your ticket entirely.
That’s what happened to Joe Comas, who booked a trip for his grandson and himself to Paris on the Spanish airline Iberia. Shortly after paying for it, he suffered an angina attack, and although his cardiologist wrote him a note saying he couldn’t travel, the carrier refused a refund because it was a special Internet fare. (I answered his question in a recent The Travel Troubleshooter column.) I’ve received dozens, if not hundreds of complaints about Internet fares that airlines treat differently from tickets bought off-line.
What if I had booked one of the fare specials on Delta Air Lines through Orbitz, as the solicited spam had invited me to?
Although Delta’s contract of carriage doesn’t specifically address Internet fares (except to say that online rates may not be accessible via its telephone reservations system), it’s also true the many airlines like Delta have quietly claimed that by booking tickets online, you’re giving up your rights to refunds, transfers, or upgrades. “It’s a bait-and-switch scheme,” says Addison Schonland, an airline analyst for PA Consulting in La Jolla, CA. “You’re getting a cheap ticket, maybe a few bonus frequent flier miles, but they’re taking away your rights.”
If you need to change your flight plans, the best you could hope for is to find a sympathetic ticket agent who will charge you $100 to look the other way and waive the tacit rules. At worst, you could join the Joe Comas’ of the world who hold a worthless ticket.
I think the bargains being sent to us as solicited spam are great opportunities to save money, as long as they’re available and advertised with plenty of disclosure. Most travelers are unaware that Internet tickets aren’t treated the same as other tickets (heck, most airline employees don’t know it half the time, either).
Spam – the real processed meat kind that you buy in the grocery store – comes with a label mandated by the federal government. Isn’t it time the spam we get through travel sites on the Internet does, too?
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