This silly story won’t go away or maybe I, along with many others won’t let it go. Unless you’ve been living in Denmark, you probably are aware that the mistake fares which provided a golden chariot from London to the US for next to nothing was cancelled by United. Readers grew irritable that I poked fun at the obscene amount of blog coverage the story received. Perspective was lost as people were up in arms that serious blogging is about addressing the issue at hand not classless buzzfeed headlines. Though it is doubtful those readers are reading this, I would like to invoke a famous State Farm employee’s words and say R-E-L-A-X.
As is the case with State Farm’s counterpart, Mr. Brady, Un-Fare Gate won’t go away. United is blaming it on the equipment Forex manager saying that it was a third-party who incorrectly stated the conversion of Denmark Krones to USD. Therefore they are within their legal rights to cancel all reservations made as a consequence of said error.
You purchased a ticket through the Danish version of united.com during the time when the prices were incorrect. As a result, we are not able to honor your ticket at the price that you paid.
Not since George Soros almost bankrupted the Bank of England has a Forex miscalculation gone so awry. Fluctuation in currency occur at the smallest of levels (called pips for fellow traders) so it is unthinkable that such an egregious and elementary mistake could have been made. It’s my contention that United should have honored the fares and held this third-party group of imbeciles liable for the error of their ways.
I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. Shit. I always do that. I always mess up some mundane detail.
-Michael Bolton of United’s 3rd Party Sacrificial Lamb
So where do we go from here? Well, ThePointsGuy offers directions on how to file a complaint with the DOT which is what I did. Why? Because sometimes we make mistakes booking a ticket and we call and cancel and plead our case only to hear that we still have to pay a change fee. Let them feel our frustration for a change (pun intended) even if it is on a much grander scale.
For reference, I believe the issue was GBP to DKK, that’s why the tickets had to be booked ex-UK, with point of sale in CPH / DKK.
So United isn’t familiar trading in exotic currencies? From a financial perspective, how does this really happen? Imagine if they misreported their P/L this way then told the governing body that it was the accountant’s fault. This would make for an interesting Forex case study apart from my gripes about not getting my cheap ticket.
Thanks for sharing.