Bad night, worthless vouchers
Question: I recently flew from Philadelphia to Tampa, Fla., with my family on US Airways. When we checked in, we found that the flight had been overbooked by 13 passengers and that the airline needed volunteers to take a flight the next morning. In exchange, the airline offered vouchers for flights anywhere in the United States.
I asked if we could use these vouchers to go out West during the holidays. The agents at the desk said that if we called in advance, it wouldn’t be a problem. I mentioned that we’d had trouble securing award tickets for that trip, but the agents told me the vouchers were different, and that there were no blackout dates on them.
Based on that information, we volunteered to take the next flight. We were sent to a hotel in a bad neighborhood, where we were afraid to leave the room to get something to eat. The sheets on our bed were so dirty that we slept in our clothes.
When we got home, I called US Airways to see if I could make flight arrangements from Tampa to Vancouver in December. It turned out there was no availability for voucher travel on those days.
I feel I have been duped and my family taken advantage of by an airline that intentionally overbooked a flight. Can you help?
— James Alver, Tampa
Answer: If an airline representative told you that getting tickets to Vancouver wouldn’t be a problem, and yet you’re having a problem, then I would say there’s definitely a problem.
Did US Airways intentionally overbook your flight? You bet. Most major airlines do.
Air carriers run sophisticated programs that manage their seat inventory. These so-called “yield management systems†try to predict how many ticketed passengers will actually show up for a flight. For the airlines, it’s a real balancing act: If they sell too few seats, they’re unprofitable; if they sell too many, they have to compensate bumped passengers with plane tickets and hotel rooms. Sometimes they get it wrong.
That would probably explain the substandard hotel, if not the semi-useless vouchers. But it wouldn’t account for the employee who told you the vouchers were easy to redeem. Surely the agent knew it would be difficult to fly to Vancouver just a few days before Christmas.
You should have, too. What the US Airways agent told you was just too good to be true. You should have asked for details about the vouchers before agreeing to anything. The terms and conditions of your vouchers are clear. There are blackout dates and other significant restrictions. Had you taken the time to read the terms, you could have avoided that unpleasant night in Philadelphia.
I contacted US Airways on your behalf, and the airline took another look at your case. A representative acknowledged that the terms of your voucher “were not clearly communicated to you,†and offered to swap your current vouchers for coupons worth $200 redeemable on any flight.