(Update) Orbitz' Low Fare Promise

I purchased airfare today through Orbitz knowing that it will qualify for the Low Fare Promise. They're playing games that they're not going to win.

Here's the low fare promise:

With Orbitz' Low Fare Promise, you know you're getting a good deal on your flight! Just book a qualifying flight on Orbitz, and if you can do better, we'll send you a $50 coupon.

Here's how it works:
Find a published airfare online for the same airline and flight(s) that costs at least $5 less than what you paid on Orbitz (excluding service fees), and we'll give you the $50 coupon for future travel.

To take advantage of the Low Fare Promise, fill out the claim form in "My Trips" by midnight Central Time on the day you buy your Orbitz ticket. If the claim is valid, you'll get a $50 coupon for every ticket in the Orbitz reservation, redeemable on any future flight, hotel, rental car or vacation package purchased on Orbitz.com.

The Low Fare Promise applies to published airfares, including Web fares, purchased on Orbitz.com, and is valid for travel wholly within the 50 United States. Restrictions apply and terms and conditions are included below.

Here's the deal: The link does not exist on Orbitz. I called customer service twice; the first guy had no clue (35 minute waste of time), the girl told me I have to email them with a screen shot of the lower price.

When it comes down to it, I have no problem fighting them to keep their "promise" and I don't doubt that I'll get it. My problem with the whole ordeal is that it is deceitful and preys on those that easily give up. I posted on their Twitter, Facebook, and have emailed the email address that was provided to me.

Any other suggestions to make sure that they follow their own rules? Attorney General? BBB (blah)? Consumerist? Am I missing anything?

$50 isn't a ton of money. This really comes down to the principle of the whole ordeal and if I fell for it, I'm sure thousands of others have too.

Travel Discussion: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/travel-discussion/

DealCrzy said:   This is not a travel question, it is a financial question. If I were asking questions regarding how to use the $50 credit once it is applied, the travel discussion would be appropriate.

it belongs in the travel forum, or at least that is what the travel forum was intended for.

Here is the issue with that kind of guarantee. Expedia had a similar guarantee and I called about it and the problem was that my fare was class X and the sale fare was class S. Because it fell within 24 hours I was able to get the lower fare, but they didn't give me the $50 credit, they gave me a $25 coupon.

I have also encountered such deceptive practices on many occasions. Some time ago I was pissed off at Vayama for advertising fake sales. They would sneakily increase the price of certain itineraries for certain dates by $40 and advertise a sale with $40 off the current price. Not sure whether they still do that crap nowadays, but I wouldn't know because I vowed to never ever buy from them again.

While I am all for free market, entrepreneurism, self-initiative, etc., these things just go to show how necessary government regulation is. Capitalism left on its own is inherently unstable and invariably degrades into corruption of morals and petty thievery just for the sake of slightly larger near-term profits.

DealCrzy said:   This isn't a travel oriented question. Replace Orbitz with any company and the situation stays the same...It could be a bank, department store, internet service provider. Anything at all. A travel company just happens to be associated with this incident.

Your justification is silly. If I am looking to save $50 a night at a hotel is it travel or finance? What if you replace the word hotel with hooker. Instead of posting in a specific forum, where people talk about experience with companies like Orbitz, you would rather convince us we are wrong.

SUCKISSTAPLES said:   tante said:   DealCrzy said:   This isn't a travel oriented question. Replace Orbitz with any company and the situation stays the same...It could be a bank, department store, internet service provider. Anything at all. A travel company just happens to be associated with this incident.

Your justification is silly. If I am looking to save $50 a night at a hotel is it travel or finance? What if you replace the word hotel with hooker. .
Then my topic alert would go off

Its about time you started a FAQ. If its not sticky after you write it, we can sticky it to the front page... Fatwallet subforum "AMP"

gacobacov said:   Some time ago I was pissed off at Vayama for advertising fake sales. They would sneakily increase the price of certain itineraries for certain dates by $40 and advertise a sale with $40 off the current price
...
While I am all for free market, entrepreneurism, self-initiative, etc., these things just go to show how necessary government regulation is
So you want to government to regulate how a private company decides to price their product, or how they price their sales prices ?

From my experience, it's just a marketing scheme to get you to buy through them. They create a ton of exceptions to prevent you from cashing in. For example, as suggested, the lower price is fare class X instead of fare class S. Or the flight routes through Denver instead of SLC. This is not much different than businesses who claim to "price match". They sell certain items that are identical to another store, but have different model numbers. I've seen it done with beds, furniture, electronics, etc. I agree with the OP that it seems quite dishonest. On the other hand, they haven't done anything illegal and are just trying to make a buck.

Stores will always try to outsmart us, and we will always try to outsmart them. We're all just trying to get more for less.

Seems that a weather change does not fall into any of those listed exclusions. I would push it to the executive level

I think I argued with them once about a flight that was pretty much exactly the same except it had a different flight number. Same time/date/connecting airports, but not the same flight number and thus no deal.

computerquest said:   Even if it was the same flight, it has been my experience that the airline would tell you that in order to get the lower fare with the difference credit, you have to pay the $150 change fee, allowing you to pay more to get the refund than the refund was even worth.
True, although some airlines automatically adjust the ticket to lower price if you ask them (US Airways), and others let you cancel the original ticket free during the first 24 hours and then you can repurchase it for less.

Alcibiades said:   gacobacov said:   Some time ago I was pissed off at Vayama for advertising fake sales. They would sneakily increase the price of certain itineraries for certain dates by $40 and advertise a sale with $40 off the current price
...
While I am all for free market, entrepreneurism, self-initiative, etc., these things just go to show how necessary government regulation is
So you want to government to regulate how a private company decides to price their product, or how they price their sales prices ?

The government puts in place consumer protection laws. Are you arguing that it is desirable for a private company to misrepresent their pricing structure in order to get more revenue without really putting up a better product than the competition? If there is nothing else to stop them, the free market encourages everybody in the same industry to start misbehaving just to stay competitive with the first cheater. This develops pretty quickly and after it does the consumer is defenseless. That is when government needs to step in and pull some ears.

Isn't that pretty much how the sub-prime mortgage debacle happened? And it happened exactly because the government slept through all the rampant cheating. I'm not saying that Orbitz and Vayama's little marketing tricks can ever lead to a global financial meltdown, but innocent consumers definitely end up suffering and this should not be tolerated at all.

Alcibiades said:   gacobacov said:   Are you arguing that it is desirable for a private company to misrepresent their pricing structure in order to get more revenue without really putting up a better product than the competition?Yes, I do not want to waste government resources tracking and deciding what constitutes the "Regular" price for each individual item sold by a company, private or public. It sounds like a stupid practice to me, but Vayama should not be prohibited from playing around with their product's "Regular" or "Sales" price if they want to.

Well then you would be disappointed to find out that lots of government resources have been "wasted" for a long time already:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/decptprc.htm

Received an email from Orbitz this morning:

Thank you for contacting us regarding low fare promise. We have verified and approved your claim, Orbitz offering you a $50 rebate per pax to use towards a future Orbitz booking. Please know that this compensation is not intended to place a value on your experience, but rather, it is meant to emphasize our commitment to you as a customer. We want to encourage you to continue using Orbitz for your travel needs.

We will get back to you with in 2 -3 days time with the required information on the usage of these vouchers.

In case you have any queries please feel free to contact us.

Sincerely,

OrbitzTLC

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Received the desired result, but still not exactly happy with their business practice.

Alcibiades said:   gacobacov said:   Well then you would be disappointed to find out that lots of government resources have been "wasted" for a long time already:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/decptprc.htmThis shows that Vayama's pricing practice is not prohibited

Dude are you kidding? Here is an excerpt from the FTC link above:

"Where the former price is genuine, the bargain being advertised is a true one. If, on the other hand, the former price being advertised is not bona fide but fictitious -- for example, where an artificial, inflated price was established for the purpose of enabling the subsequent offer of a large reduction -- the ``bargain'' being advertised is a false one; the purchaser is not receiving the unusual value he expects. In such a case, the ``reduced'' price is, in reality, probably just the seller's regular price."

Vayama's former price being advertised was not bona fide but fictitious. An artificial, inflated price was established for the purpose of enabling the subsequent offer of a large reduction. The purchaser is not receiving the unusual value he expects. The "reduced" price is, in reality, just the seller's regular price.

Do you still not understand?

DealCrzy said:   Received an email from Orbitz this morning:

Thank you for contacting us regarding low fare promise. We have verified and approved your claim, Orbitz offering you a $50 rebate per pax to use towards a future Orbitz booking. Please know that this compensation is not intended to place a value on your experience, but rather, it is meant to emphasize our commitment to you as a customer. We want to encourage you to continue using Orbitz for your travel needs.

We will get back to you with in 2 -3 days time with the required information on the usage of these vouchers.

In case you have any queries please feel free to contact us.

Sincerely,

OrbitzTLC


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Received the desired result, but still not exactly happy with their business practice.
Do you know what step you took that worked to change their position ? Please share !

SUCKISSTAPLES said:   DealCrzy said:   Received an email from Orbitz this morning:

Thank you for contacting us regarding low fare promise. We have verified and approved your claim, Orbitz offering you a $50 rebate per pax to use towards a future Orbitz booking. Please know that this compensation is not intended to place a value on your experience, but rather, it is meant to emphasize our commitment to you as a customer. We want to encourage you to continue using Orbitz for your travel needs.

We will get back to you with in 2 -3 days time with the required information on the usage of these vouchers.

In case you have any queries please feel free to contact us.

Sincerely,

OrbitzTLC


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Received the desired result, but still not exactly happy with their business practice.
Do you know what step you took that worked to change their position ? Please share !

I'm not sure which of the numerous steps I took made it work. I took the approach of attacking from multiple angles and hope to hit the target with at least one. I talked to their customer service twice via phone (worthless and did nothing), I posted about it on their Facebook wall (may have actually helped - they sent me a message), I tweeted about it (they responded and called - this may have been the golden ticket). I only have about 150 followers on Twitter, which isn't exactly substantial, but maybe enough to get their attention before I made more noise about the issue.

Anyhow, I was definitely on their radar after the first day.

Dispute would be a good tactic that I likely would have considered if bugging the living hell out of them didn't work...Followed by small claims court - Companies often times seem to respond favorably when it starts to cost them more than it's worth.