Delta may have overcharged some frequent fliers for tickets

[FWAAA]

Delta Air Lines may have charged some frequent fliers higher fares than other customers for almost three weeks because of a computer glitch.

Delta acknowledged on Wednesday that frequent fliers who logged into its website to search for fares saw different prices than people who searched anonymously. Delta spokesman Paul Skrbec said frequent fliers sometimes saw higher fares, sometimes lower. He said the problem has been fixed and apologized to travelers. He didn't know how many people had been affected.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iifsGBd1ZC1uf67OUXjluZoY8l-w?docId=43579e1b52dd435ea193a70e952f288d

Oops.

 

[WorldTraveler]

Amazon supposedly tried differential pricing and it backfired as well.

Given that there is no way to know the actual price that could have been paid, this will leave a bitter taste in some people's mouth to think that DL has even tested the capability of differential pricing - because pricing search engines have to be told to consider passenger status or they would price all itineraries through the same channel at the same price.

 

[eolesen]

Would it still be distasteful had the pricing had been a discounted based on tier status instead of higher?

The technology has long existed to modify fare and availability searches based on a point of sale. Some airlines already filter award availability based on tier status, so why shouldn't they look at doing the same thing with pricing?

 

[BoeingBoy]

I doubt that the people that caught the fare difference would have complained and it would be hard for a non-FF member to see that any difference existed. But perhaps an elite buying tickets for himself and a non-elite companion would have noticed and complained about the "reverse" discrimination.

Besides, as you touched on the airlines do in effect offer discounts to their FF program mambers and especially elites through award seats, elite upgrade mechanisms and even the seats nearer the front of coach that non-elites have to pay to sit in.

Jim

 

[LD3]

Amazon supposedly tried differential pricing and it backfired as well.

You will say anything to deflect bad press to your beloved DL..

 

[BoeingBoy]

The response by the PR flack is not surprising but my question is how the site offered different fares to members of the FF program unless someone programed it to do that? In other words, it seems to me that this "problem" was intentional. When fares change, they are changed in the database that the res system uses, OAG and others are notified, etc. Without specific programing why would the website pull a different fare depending on whether a person was signed in or not?

Something similiar was mentioned in the US forum of FlyerTalk - people would check the fare for an itineriary, check other options, then recheck the original itineriary and get a higher fare the second time - but not connected to being signed in to their FF account or not. It was just checking the same itinerary more than once. Someone mentioned that closing the browser window and starting fresh was a work-around.

Jim

 

[WorldTraveler]

You will say anything to deflect bad press to your beloved DL..

You mean that you will filter whatever is said to create the interpretation of what others have said that you want to say.

The reality is that differential pricing has been tried before by other companies.

DL has since said that they were using different pricing search engines and the different prices were based on the different search engines, not because the results were filtered for one client over another and not because there was a different point of sale used.

 

[LD3]

The issue is Delta got with their hand in the cookie jar, and you will go down defendng them instead of admitting they F'd up..

 

[WorldTraveler]

The issue is Delta got with their hand in the cookie jar, and you will go down defendng them instead of admitting they F'd up..

There is nothing in what I have written on this issue that excuses DL.
Your attempts to portray it that way demonstrates your inability to read what was written without inserting your own bias.

DL needs to explain - and they very well may get the opportunity to do it in Washington - what happened, explain how two pricing search engines can come up with different results, and why they chose to separate some people to use one pricing engine and others into the other.

And to those people who believe they might have been ripped off - and no one really knows - DL needs to do all they can to demonstrate that they will make good on whatever pricing difference that occurred to those people.

 

[Kev3188]

The company is calling it "confusion" by travelers.

"Some of the changes Delta has been making to delta.com to give customers a faster, easier booking experience have resulted in confusion by some users about differences in their online fares on the website."

 

[eolesen]

Spin, spin, spin.

The real truth came out on Friday - DL currently uses Worldspan (now owned by Travelport) as the fare search engine for DL.com, but they've been looking at migrating away from that for well over a year, and shortlisted ITA as the (or perhaps one of two) new vendors. DL decided to do live A-B testing -- anonymous users were getting ITA's results, and logged in users were getting Travelport's results.

One way to look at this is that DL.com has been pricing higher for the past X years, and not just during the test.

The flip side of that is that the newer search engines are far better, and provide more results for consumers, assuming DL doesn't clamp down on the search parameters to keep yields up.