Recap: United Threatens Hidden City Ticketing Customers, eBay Accuses Amazon & More

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• I would totally tell United to go fcuk themselves! Of course, that'll unlikely to happen, because I fly Southwest, and hated flying United once earlier this year — never again! Delta and AA are OK; Alaska and Southwest are the best.

• There is just something fucking hilarious to state that one is liable for payment for NOT taking a flight. I was NOT a part of the cost of the fuel that was utilized. It's like me telling you that you owe me for me doing nothing. The concept of that going to court is simply hilarious..

  • Well the counter-argument would be that they could have sold the spot to another passenger who paid for it "appropriately." Not that I agree with that...

    • How is that a counter argument?! If they were able to sell individual segments for above the price of the combined trip, and were precluded from doing so by your purchase of the extra leg that you didn't use — why did they sell you the legs for so cheap?!

• I asked my fraud class professor back in MBA school something like this before. He told its totally legal for a lot of things we do for churning. However, is it moral hes not so sure. Moreover, it’s united’s Job to have a tighter internal control on their IT system than letting people find these deals easy. I don’t believe united has any ground to hold any customers responsible for the own problem. I do believe they have the right to refuse to carry you if they believe you are abusing the system.

  • You posted the same comment on the actual article. Do you intend to engage in a discussion with follow-up comments in both places, or are you just vomiting on the comment sections?

  • It isn't immoral. You aren't costing the airline any more money by not flying that last leg. In reality there needs to be a regulatory rule that prevents airlines from banning people for taking advantage of loopholes in their own system. Then they can either price competitively or blame themselves.
    Same regulatory body needs to also address the excessive bag fees but difficult when the airlines have so much $ riding on it.

    • It's against their terms "Prohibited Practices" so yes, it's unethical to skirt them and I'm sure it's within their rights to ban customers for continuously violating their terms.

      • How are you "skirting them?"

        You purchased a service from them and they made money.

        If United wants customers to be on every flight, then it would be the customers who are providing a service to United. A purchase, alone, does not entail an obligation to actually use that service or product.

      • It being against their terms does not equal it is unethical. United's terms do not determine what is ethical.

      • US law considers companies people. I don't, nor do many other people.

        It's a hard sell to say I have an ethical obligation to an imaginary entity's made up rules.

  • I don't think many people who churn would claim it is moral or ethical. The basic premise is taking advantage of things that shouldn't exist.

• I saw a commercial last week for an interview with Oscar Munoz (United CEO) and I thought to myself - 'Gee, it's been just over a year without them coming up with some wild new way to push customers away'

  Time to start the clock again. So glad I can easily avoid using United.

  • Recently flew a short United flight and the seat back entertainment played ads the for the duration. I inquired with the flight attendant on how to turn the screen off and was told it was not possible. I fly very often although very rarely on United and this was the one of the worst customer experiences I have ever seen curated.

• United is a terribly mismanaged airline... All these efforts are doing is bringing more attention to hidden city ticketing and promote it to people who had no clue it existed.

  They should focus on improving passenger experience so people would actually want to fly with them.

  • I'd argue United is a well-managed company though that doesn't mean it's good for consumers. When you know you're operating in an environment with limited competition, you plan accordingly, and that means worse customer service, cost-saving measures, but full planes. Look at United's stock price, it's near an all-time high. American, on the other hand, is operating pathetically, with crappy service and worse financial metrics (due to trying to compete with low-cost carriers and poor operational metrics).

    I view this as more a regulatory failure than anything else.

• Good point Doc about both eBay and Amazon having issues.

  The fashionable thing to say is how crappy eBay is and how great amazon is. The thing is, I don’t think the people who love amazon so much realize how similar they are to Walmart and in some ways worse (until recently terrible wages for warehouse workers, terrible treatment of delivery drivers and sub contracted couriers, the Big Brother like survellience of warehouse workers and delivery drivers, the unethical tactics against their marketplace sellers /vendor central sellers, the list goes on and on). Granted amazon has better product selection and more ancillary value services...but so many shamed walmart in the past for their tyrannical ways and vowed not to shop there, yet continue to pop in their amazon prime orders not realizing all the shadiness that comes with their 2 day delivery.

  I personally believe the allegations to be true, but it does reek of sour grapes from eBay. They’ve got to put out a better product or they’re going to continue losing. It’s probably too late to compete with amazon for retail, but eBay could lose their core flea-market business to places like Facebook Poshmark Reverb and Mercari if they don’t up their game quickly.

  • I agree. We don't seem to care about the cool tech companies doing bad things to us and others like we did about Walmart though they have improved their employee compensation package. What about Microsoft being an evil monopoly back in the day. We cared then, now, as long as I have a cool iPhone or gmail they can over charge me and collect all my information and we love it!

  • But oh how your whining will stop if the offending company offers you something for free.