Price guarantees — guaranteed hard to collect
Is Orbitz’ new price guarantee everything it claims to be? The online agency’s price assurance promises if another customer books the same flight at a lower price, “we’ll automatically send you the difference in cash.”
Oh, really?
Yes. Sort of.
Book a flight on Orbitz and we’ll start tracking to see if another customer books the same itinerary at a lower price. We’ll continue tracking until the day you fly. Each time the price drops and someone books your flight for less, we’ll issue a cash refund for the difference, between $5 and $250 per traveler.
But our friends over at Gadling correctly point out out that you’d better read the fine print.
Among the restrictions:
You’re entitled to reimbursement only if another passenger manages to book the exact same flight — same dates, times, itinerary, fare class, etc. — on Orbitz.
If the fare drops on other Web sites, you’re out of luck.
If the airline itself reduces the fare on its own Web site (in an effort to get last minute bookings), you’re out of luck.
If the airline goes out of business, Orbitz owes you nothing.
Just like Priceline’s Sunshine Guarantee that we reported on last week, there’s always a catch.
American Airlines’ Lowest Fare Guarantee has similar seemingly simple rules that are nearly impossible to prove or follow to collect the “guarantee.”
Rick Seaney of FareCompare tested the airlines’ guarantees about a year ago and found that while some of them worked well, many were maddeningly complex with restrictions that are almost impossible to skirt.
After an exasperating session with Northwest Airlines trying to collect a fare guarantee, he commented,
Although, by the letter of their terms and condition, if there had been a way for me to hire a satellite TV crew with an atomic clock to timestamp my display of the Travelocity.com page showing $109 and NWA.com showing $189 simultaneously, I would be well within Northwest’s policy to receive the $50 E-Certificate.
These guarantees are excellent marketing devices, however the continued monitoring of the Web sites and the hoops one has to jump through in order to collect the fare differential makes them hardly worth the while. A list of how many of these guarantees have been claimed and refunded would be interesting. But I’m not holding my breath.
But in a world where a $5 difference seems to be such a differentiator these “guarantees” serve their purpose. And, really, with airfares going up by the day in this environment of high jet fuel prices, these guarantees and their restrictive rules are fairly moot.
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