When news of South African Airways’ bargain business fare blunder broke last week, there were predictably howls of outrage about the national carrier’s intention to refund those who’d snapped up seats online, rather than honour the ridiculously low fares.
Most aggrieved, of course, were those who bought the 640 Johannesburg to Abu Dhabi business class tickets for a mere R858 each. Normal price for those tickets: more than R30 000.
The first “mistake” ticket was bought on SAA’s website on the evening of February 26, and the last the following afternoon when the problem was spotted and sales suspended. A day later –
Saturday February 28 – all those R858 fares were cancelled and last Monday SAA broke the news to the holders of the then invalid tickets.
Typical of the comments on online news sites last week was this, by “Mohammed”: “Since the CPA came into affect, SAA is bound by their contractual obligations to honour these tickets ...once the e-ticket has been issued.”
“Kelly” went a step further: “CPA says they would have to honour those prices or in fact give them free of charge!” she posted.
Actually, the Consumer Protection Act says no such thing. What it does say is this: “If a price as displayed contains an inadvertent and obvious error, the supplier is not bound by it after correcting the error in the displayed price; and taking reasonable steps ...to inform consumers to whom the erroneous price may have been displayed of the error and the correct price”.
Commenting on the case, CPA attorney Janusz Luterek said: “The purpose of the CPA is to protect consumers from exploitation, such as bait marketing, but an error of the magnitude described here cannot be seen as bait marketing; it’s clearly a glaring error. It is not the purpose of the CPA to allow consumers to exploit suppliers.”
But he added that while SAA was legally entitled to correct their mistake and refund those who’d benefited from it, “this is very bad PR for them when they are trying to get on their feet”.
Common law refers to the act of consumers knowingly taking advantage of a very obvious pricing mistake as “snatching a bargain” and holds that the supplier does not have to honour the price mistake.
But in an e-mail to In Your Corner, Ebrahim Laher said that before going ahead with his R858 flight booking, he phoned the SAA call centre to check the price.
And then I read a report quoting SAA spokesman Tlali Tlali as saying that some SAA airline help-desk operators had told suspicious would-be buyers who had phoned in about the super-low fare, that it was correct.
To my mind, the act of checking a very low price eliminates the “snatching a bargain” accusation.
When I ran this past Consumer Goods & Services Ombud Neville Melville he pointed to one of his office’s recent decisions, which “is not a binding precedent but illustrates the principle”, he said. In that case, a man asked for a quote for wood, and paid R6600 as quoted, but the supplier later said the quote was a mistake, and should have been
R12 000 more, refusing to supply the wood until the extra amount was paid.
The Ombud’s office held that because the consumer had taken steps to confirm the supplied price more than once, and couldn’t be expected to know that it was wrong, he couldn’t be accused of “snatching a bargain” and thus the supplier should honour the quote.
Based on that, I suggested to Tlali that the fair and reasonable decision to be made, in the case of those who called the call centre to check on the advertised price before proceeding with the transaction, is that they be granted the tickets at that price. Responding, Tlali said there was no evidence of any of them having first checked the fare, and that it wasn’t he who’d suggested that this had happened, but rather a caller to a radio station, to which he’d responded that he’d investigate.
In Laher’s case, Tlali said, the recording of the call in question revealed that he had called to change the travel dates on his bookings. “He did not at any stage make enquiries about the correctness or otherwise of the published fare.”
One would think, though, that the call centre agent would have noted the ridiculously low fare and put Laher on hold while she checked.
SAA’s final word: “Whilst the occurrence of this incident brings to the surface a number of legal arguments ...and the doctrine of mistake, we would like to focus on improved customer service founded on mutual respect and accountability.”
All the “wrong” ticket payments should have been refunded by yesterday Tlali said.
More ticket cancellations
The UK Guardian reported last month that United Airlines had cancelled the reservations of customers who took advantage of a pricing glitch on first-class tickets sold on the airline’s Danish website.
A round trip from Heathrow to New York for two, for example, which costs £6118.92 (R109682.33) on the British site, was sold for just 974 Danish Krone (R1690.45) – less than £100.
Unlike SAA, which took almost 24 hours to discover its fare fiasco, United was on to it in two hours, but by then “several thousand” people had snapped up the bargain tickets.
SAA ticket saga blunder does not fly with clients
Most aggrieved, of course, were those who bought the 640 Johannesburg to Abu Dhabi business class tickets for a mere R858 each. Normal price for those tickets: more than R30 000.
The first “mistake” ticket was bought on SAA’s website on the evening of February 26, and the last the following afternoon when the problem was spotted and sales suspended. A day later –
Saturday February 28 – all those R858 fares were cancelled and last Monday SAA broke the news to the holders of the then invalid tickets.
Typical of the comments on online news sites last week was this, by “Mohammed”: “Since the CPA came into affect, SAA is bound by their contractual obligations to honour these tickets ...once the e-ticket has been issued.”
“Kelly” went a step further: “CPA says they would have to honour those prices or in fact give them free of charge!” she posted.
Actually, the Consumer Protection Act says no such thing. What it does say is this: “If a price as displayed contains an inadvertent and obvious error, the supplier is not bound by it after correcting the error in the displayed price; and taking reasonable steps ...to inform consumers to whom the erroneous price may have been displayed of the error and the correct price”.
Commenting on the case, CPA attorney Janusz Luterek said: “The purpose of the CPA is to protect consumers from exploitation, such as bait marketing, but an error of the magnitude described here cannot be seen as bait marketing; it’s clearly a glaring error. It is not the purpose of the CPA to allow consumers to exploit suppliers.”
But he added that while SAA was legally entitled to correct their mistake and refund those who’d benefited from it, “this is very bad PR for them when they are trying to get on their feet”.
Common law refers to the act of consumers knowingly taking advantage of a very obvious pricing mistake as “snatching a bargain” and holds that the supplier does not have to honour the price mistake.
But in an e-mail to In Your Corner, Ebrahim Laher said that before going ahead with his R858 flight booking, he phoned the SAA call centre to check the price.
And then I read a report quoting SAA spokesman Tlali Tlali as saying that some SAA airline help-desk operators had told suspicious would-be buyers who had phoned in about the super-low fare, that it was correct.
To my mind, the act of checking a very low price eliminates the “snatching a bargain” accusation.
When I ran this past Consumer Goods & Services Ombud Neville Melville he pointed to one of his office’s recent decisions, which “is not a binding precedent but illustrates the principle”, he said. In that case, a man asked for a quote for wood, and paid R6600 as quoted, but the supplier later said the quote was a mistake, and should have been
R12 000 more, refusing to supply the wood until the extra amount was paid.
The Ombud’s office held that because the consumer had taken steps to confirm the supplied price more than once, and couldn’t be expected to know that it was wrong, he couldn’t be accused of “snatching a bargain” and thus the supplier should honour the quote.
Based on that, I suggested to Tlali that the fair and reasonable decision to be made, in the case of those who called the call centre to check on the advertised price before proceeding with the transaction, is that they be granted the tickets at that price. Responding, Tlali said there was no evidence of any of them having first checked the fare, and that it wasn’t he who’d suggested that this had happened, but rather a caller to a radio station, to which he’d responded that he’d investigate.
In Laher’s case, Tlali said, the recording of the call in question revealed that he had called to change the travel dates on his bookings. “He did not at any stage make enquiries about the correctness or otherwise of the published fare.”
One would think, though, that the call centre agent would have noted the ridiculously low fare and put Laher on hold while she checked.
SAA’s final word: “Whilst the occurrence of this incident brings to the surface a number of legal arguments ...and the doctrine of mistake, we would like to focus on improved customer service founded on mutual respect and accountability.”
All the “wrong” ticket payments should have been refunded by yesterday Tlali said.
More ticket cancellations
The UK Guardian reported last month that United Airlines had cancelled the reservations of customers who took advantage of a pricing glitch on first-class tickets sold on the airline’s Danish website.
A round trip from Heathrow to New York for two, for example, which costs £6118.92 (R109682.33) on the British site, was sold for just 974 Danish Krone (R1690.45) – less than £100.
Unlike SAA, which took almost 24 hours to discover its fare fiasco, United was on to it in two hours, but by then “several thousand” people had snapped up the bargain tickets.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Register (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.
Trending Now
Latest Videos