For a brief period over the weekend, Qantas offered round-trip tickets between Australia and the USA for as little as 4200 AUD (about 2800 USD) round-trip. Qantas has since clarified that it will not honor the “mistake fare”…in first class…but will honor the tickets if customers accept a downgrade to business class. Is this fair?
Qantas Will Rebook First Class “Mistake Fare” In Business Class
Let’s first talk about the law. Australian law is murky on mistake fares. The Australian Consumer Law (ACL),overeen by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), does not require airline to honor mistake fares. In the event of a “genuine mistake in pricing” a merchant is generally able to rescind the sale.
Furthermore, the Qantas Contract of Carriage says the carrier retains the right to cancel mistake fares that are “reasonably obvious” without providing a definition of the term.
Sometimes mistakes are made and incorrect fares can be displayed. If there is an error or mistake that is reasonably obvious in the fare price and you have a Ticket and/or a confirmed booking, we may:
(a) cancel the Ticket and/or booking;
(b) provide you with a refund in accordance with 14 (Refunds);
(c) offer you a new Ticket at the correct fare price as at the time of the booking; and
(d) in the event that you accept the offer and pay the correct fare issue you with a new Ticket.
Is a first class fare that is 85% off its normal price a “reasonably obvious” mistake fare? I’d say yes, especially considering that Qantas does not have a history of offering similar first class fare sales.
Rather than simply cancel the tickets, Qantas is giving consumers two options:
- full refund
- rebooking in business class
An updated ticket and itinerary has been sent to you which is for the same dates as booked for travel in our Business cabin. Any future date changes are subject to our standard fare rules, and any applicable fare difference. If you are proceeding with this offer there is no action required from you.
If you do not wish to proceed with this offer, you can request a full refund by replying to this email directly confirming that you wish to cancel and refund this booking. We will then process a refund to the original form of payment.
Let’s Not Give Qantas Too Much Credit…
Many have praised Qantas for its generosity, but I tend to agree with One Mile At A Time, who is not impressed. About 300 ticketed were booked and any math calculation trying to calculate how much this mistake fare cost Qantas is hopelessly imprecise.
After all, Qantas does not sell out every ticket at full fare. You can often save money by originating in another city. Sometimes you can use miles to book the seat or upgrade. Discounted paid upgrades are available subject to availability.
The point is that those seats might not have even necessarily been filled. Selling them at 4200 AUD may not be a hugely profitable deal for Qantas, but it might net a lot more money than an upgrade or mileage ticket.
So no, I’m also not impressed. Yes, better this than simply a cancellation, but I hardly think Qantas is acting altruistically.
CONCLUSION
Qantas has canceled hundreds of first class tickets it claims were sold in error. Rather than simply cancel the tickets, it has offered passengers the opportunity to keep the tickets if they accept a downgrade to business class. While this is better than nothing, I’d hardly call it an extremely generous offer…
> Read More: Qantas A380 First Class Review From Sydney – Los Angeles
The grammar and spelling recently has been poor. Perhaps this is a new hip writing style or something that I am not aware. However, I would appreciate a general spellcheck. I do find value in a tool called Grammarly.
“Conraact”
“defeintion”
I use a worthless tool called Grammarly, Benjamin, and it doesn’t function as it should.
But how can you misspell so much in the first place? There were over 20 (!) typos! How do you not see it? Do you never proofread at all? Or simply just read the article just once?
I’ve always struggled with spelling. But it seems to bother you more than most.
You didn’t answer my question. Do you not read your article before submission at all?
Nowadays I ignore most of your typos but this article with 20 of them really took the cake. And yes, I know there is not a person on this site that is bothered by it more than I am.
Wow, at least take some pride in this. You sound like a NA union FA with that attitude
Matt I am the same. I am a speaker and my grammer is not the best. I also use Grammarly and it is not amazing but better than nothing. People just need to calm down. No one is perfect and we don’t do it on purpose. I do try my best. My most favourite mistake to date was I was meant to say (to a client) sorry about any inconvenience however I said sorry for any incontinence. Lucky I have a great relationship and they laughed it off. Anyway, keep up the good work.
Seriously, It’s a free blog, have some grace. It’s 2024 and this is not the New Yorker. If you need too end copyediting, there are plenty of national news outlets that will provide that. If you can make corrections, you can clearly understand what the intended connotation is.
If copyediting was the #1 priority, I’m sure Ben would do that, but it would be at the expense of the timeliness of posts and/or come with (even more ads).
LOL .. Qatnas 🙂
I stopped reading after that ..
I see the 3 or 4 years of law school did not help his writing ..
P/S use spell check on Word, when writing. I do ..
Be nice. Law school does not teach you how to spell…
Have a random drawing of those who scarfed the FC tickets .
10% will be awarded the FC seats .
I have always wanted the ” oopertunity ” to snag an error deal. However few like this are honored in the end,
I’ve flown on more than 200 extraordinarily cheap tickets in premium cabins over the last 24 years. I am speaking about sub-$400 roundtrip long-haul biz class tickets covering airlines in each of the big three major airline alliances.
“So no, I’m also not impresed. Yes, better this htan simply a cnacellation, but I hardly think Qantas is acting alruistically.” Damn, that was ROUGH. Four spelling errors here.
@Lukas … Please improve your spelling .
Also “passnegers the ooprountiy” is quite something. There are more errors in here but these were the worst. I’m actually concerned for you Matthew, these errors are quite obvious, are you OK health-wise?
Besides the ones I mentioned, there are 15 (!) other spelling errors. I think this goes beyond simply a few typos, please get checked out, Matthew.
Haha. It’s rough. Dude relies on software to spell properly T_T
Edited by Augustine?
Compared to other mistake fares that don’t get honored or even refunded, this isn’t such a bad deal.
Seems like a miserly way of “honoring” the tickets they sold to customers. Before the US DOT and other government regulators and arbitrators started giving airlines favors in not holding the airlines to provide transport as ticketed, we see more and more of these “deals” being unilaterally dishonored by the airlines.
If the detail making the rounds was accurate, less than 400 of these tickets were evens sold.
Well, it’s not a “deal” as they never intended to sell at that price.
Mistakes happen, and they spell out their response in their contract of carriage and website…..
Besides, if “only” 400 tickets X 15000 in lost revenue per ticket is chump change … Then I want to hang out with you more on your yacht and private island
Adam1222 in bed with defending airlines and moralizing about ethics when consumers jump on board when a deal is deemed extra good for consumers but not when the airlines are screwing over consumers with contracts of adhesion that are bad for consumers?
Big fan of this blog but the spelling and grammar has gotten noticeably worse lately.
I use Grammarly regularly without issue. It rarely falters so I’m not sure how it could not be functioning properly for you. Perhaps reach out to their support or upgrade to Premium?
If you’re writing in Google Docs, you need to enable Grammarly for Google Docs.
Not trying to be mean and I hope it’s not taken that way, but hopefully constructive as I really only want the best for this blog and its readers.
The problem may be Word Press…it’s not Safari. Not sure what else to do.
Sounds like you might be right. If you Google “Grammarly WordPress” it seems others have had this issue and found solutions.
First, I’d ensure you see that Grammarly is working properly within Safari. The G icon should be there out even try misspelling a word on purpose and see if it’s underlined red. I use Chrome so I’m not sure what the process is for using in Safari.
God bless!
With all these typos, this article should considered a “Mistake Fair”
😀 +1
Lighten up, Francis.
Good grief people, cut Matthew some slack. Unlike Qantas, he is letting you keep his mistakes for free. As far as the airline goes, while I do not think this offer is generous, I do think it is reasonable. Nobody’s travel plans are being disrupted, nor are they being tossed in coach. If someone booked only to have the treat of flying F, they have the option to refund. If they booked for a good deal to get to Australia comfortably, they are still getting that (since $2,800 RT is a great deal in J as well).
I would have happily taken a downgrade to BC.
For about double this dishonored fare, I can travel round the world in business class with multiple stops on multiple continents. So the downgrade to business class really isn’t worth it to me for the money. But it’s a YMMV situation.
What is going on with the typos here?
Laughably bad ..
Even after countless readers pointed out the MANY mistakes, you still don’t want to edit the article ..
“About 300 ticketed were booked and any math calculation trying to calculate how mcuh htis mistake fare cost Qantas is hopelessly imprecise.”
I was wondering what all you people continued to babble about the spelling errors because I made all the corrections shortly after the post published.
But now I see that for some reason that did not save…so your comments make sense.
My bad!