You win some and you lose some.
My first time in Hawaii was with airfare and hotel for $87 with tax. I and thousands of others scored Airfare and 5 star accommodations at hotels like the Bellagio with Cirque tickets in Las Vegas all for free thanks to Expedia. I have lifetime free stays in suites at Fairmont hotels. There have been $250 tickets to anywhere in Europe. And of course there were the $336 El Al tickets that they honored with grace.
All of those “mistakes” were honored, but of course there will always be deals that are not honored. United didn’t honor the 4 mile island Hong Kong first class award tickets and the DoT agreed with their logic.
And now Alitalia is making up bogus retroactive terms on the Japan coupon that didn’t exist when people bought the tickets and using that to cancel people’s confirmed reservations. The new terms say “Offer is valid for departure from Tokyo and Osaka.”
The old terms did not say that.
I did write in the post that Alitalia may try to cancel tickets and that’s exactly what happened.
What can you do? You can just give it up but it is within your rights to file a complaint with the US DoT (online form) and the EU equivalent (mailed form)
Airlines are strictly regulated and generally can’t just cancel tickets, especially when it’s due to terms they forgot to write on the coupon page. However it is up to those regulatory organization to enforce their rules and they can only do so if people complain.
Others will say it’s not moral to complain about mistake fares, so I’ll leave that ethical decision in your hands, I’m just telling you your options.
It seems that Facebook complaint groups are already popping up as well such as this one and this one.
To be clear, they are only cancelling the tickets booked with the $315 coupon. They are still running the 25% off promotion with which you can still get some great deals (JFK-TLV for $763, MIA-TLV for $729, etc).
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46 Comments On "Alitalia Cancels Japanese Tickets"
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What terms are they making up in order to cancel these tickets? I didn’t book this deal because I’m already going this winter on an El Al ticket (Thanks Dan 🙂 ), but I’m curious to know what argument they’re trying to give.
I can’t wait for the first complaint to use google translate as a source for the terms of the deal.
I’m hoping for a lot of hate comments – so Dan will never post a price mistake again and us ddf’ers will be able to take advantage of the deal to its fullest extent + we wont screw it up by calling the airline.
🙂
Any examples of good deals with the 25%off discount?
i just bought 4 tickets to israel with one stop less then 2 hours in feb. for $763 with the special code 25% off
When EVERY SINGLE blogger writes about this, its only a matter of time before 1,000’s of tickets are booked sending red flags.
Oh well….
Glad i didn’t go crazy over this deal 🙂
As always, thank you dan for posting this
@Yosef_S:
I’ve added that info to the post.
They canceled ticket on all the PROMOJP ticket from all over Europe as well we are not the only ones to have this issue I talked to friends abroad and they told me they received similar emails and responses from Alitalia
Anyone have a screenshot of old terms?
@hudi:
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/578371_370775599674556_1013815281_n.jpg
בתר ×¢× ×™×ª×” ×זלה ×¢× ×™×ª×”
How about all the people that paid other people to buy for them ?
😱💵✈
Alitalia is the worst airline ever for international flights! they don’t follow rules and regulations, and there is no one to talk to. i think everyone should put in a complaint with the DOT. Even if you didn’t buy a ticket (as i did). they should be shut down!
I booked tickets last night on the alitalia japanese website and e/t went throught fine. I even called this morning to make sure everything was ok. They said my tickets were issued. Does this mean that they can still be cancelled?
If anyone is board, i dont think much would come out of this but here are a few regulatory authorities to call or contact
Good luck
Skyteam Contact
mailto:website@skyteam.com
Italian department of air transport
General Manager: Dr. Mario Gerardo PelosiÂ
Phone: 06/5908.4908- 4041-4350 Fax: 06/5908.3280Â
Email: segreteria_dgata@mit.gov.itÂ
European union Contact Information
Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport
44 Kildare St., Dublin 2, Ireland.
Tel: + 353 1 670 7444
or Locall 0761 001 601
Email: info@dttas.ie
ICAO Contact list (International Civil Aviation Organization)
http://www.icao.int/Security/mrtd/PKD%20Documents/PKD%20Participant%20Contact%20List.pdf
FAA link to file a complaint
http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/escomplaint/es.cfm
Just submitted a complaint to US DOT. They say they don’t deal with individual complaints but merely record them for the aggregate….
Speaking about trips, where’s the latest trip report? 😉
What is the cheapest DIRECT flight to Israel?
@EJB:
Why would you need google translate. Many of us know/work with people from Japan. They can translate it and I’m sure at least one person at the dot also speak Japanese. It’s not like what it said is a mystery.
@ dan do u think the 763 deal to tlv is a great deal to catch or such deals can still come up with better airlines
@Paul
You wouldn’t need it, but I’m sure some of the complaints sent to regulators will have a screenshot of the google translated page (only) to demonstrate what the terms & conditions of the offer were.
@ShmuliT:
yes, that is what I need. Would like to leave around Nov 8th or 11th. Please let me know if there is something special
Thanks so much!
How can i know if they canceled my tickets?
i purchased a ticket for $705 yesterday, today got email that ticket won’t be honored
@rose: yes, all were cancelled and Alitalia took the correct action. Do you want an airline to fly you all over Europe for free? and take huge losses , the site was in Japanese intended for Japan customers .
How can i know if the tickets are canceled if i didn’t recive any email…??
im curious to know- i didnt receive any call or email saying my ticket was cancelled. how soon after booking did you get the email
I also agree that Alitalia did the RIGHT thing.
Of course this was a mistake and EVERYONE that booked the tickets KNEW it was a mistake!
Why should Alitalia honor these tickets?
Alitalia must honor posted prices & deals, even if it is an obvious mistake. This requirement is necessary to ensure that the airlines will be careful in posting deals. It also helps the airline, because it will foster trust amongst their potential customers. Also, it will prevent airlines from playing games with their pricing & deals. Finally, the fact that Alitalia apparently changed the terms indicates that they are aware of the rules and are trying to manipulate it after the fact.
Dan, when elal said they may not honor you and the posters wrote so much hate on them. But when the Japanese do it its fine. Why the difference?
@shteible:
Lol, first of all it’s not the Japanese it’s the Italians.
And please point me to where I hated on El Al? The strange thing in that case was that they tweeted that they would honor the deal, then tweeted that it was still undecided, before they came out and say once again that they would honor it.
This was clearly a mistake by the fact that this offer only worked by going through the Alitalia Japan site. Why is it that if one makes a mistake, you have to benefit at their expense?
If you owned a business and made such a mistake, pray tell me that you wouldn’t want people taking advantage.
are the 25% off tickets on the us alitalia site still being honored? because now i booked those…
This is such a chutzpah!!! How can the do this?? Lets storm the DOT!
Lets protest in front of their offices.
@Nolad:
Why was it a mistake? They offered a coupon, and afterward they regretted it and added new terms.
@rose:
Yes.
Do they pay back the full amount when they cancel the ticket??
How is 700 for a trip to Israel’s mistake looks just like a good deal!
@Dan: i believe there’s not to much hate here being its somewhat a relief that you wont need to make 60 stopovers to get to Israel:-)
nu nu … lets all give Dan a thank you for trying to get cheap tickets to the holy land 🙂 and to Askan “beggars cant be choosey” so bottom line is thank you DAN u da best!!!!!
@dan Thanks again for bringing us GREAT deals always. Don’t give up try to find more mistakes on airlines. It doesn’t always work BUT as you all see ELAL was kind enough they did honor the tickets even it was clear that it was an error much more then now by ALITALIA. DON’T GIVE UP hay you never know………
I bought 2 seprate tickets one jfk-madrid and one madrid-tlv giving myself long layovers for touring spain. I did not think it was a mistake there are great deals on flights all the time. there was a cupon that made the tickets cheaper and thats what cupons are for.
the trip to madrid from jfk never went through. I got an error message that my card was frozen (amex platinum)
the madrid-tlv went through and I got an e-ticket number, record locator number…. but no email confirmation.
I called amex and they released the hold I still couldnt get the charge to go through because the airline site had already crashed.
I called the airline to “purchase a ticket” I told them i am trying to use the website but it crashes. They told me that there was some kind of error and the site had crashed 3 times already. they already canceled over 500 tickets to Israel. I told her I just want to go to madrid. She got the times i wanted and quoted me the price ($1100 per ticket) which i left on hold.
Is it true that Alitalia is prone to losing your luggage??
Is the 25% off still working???
thanks
Thank you for everything you do! What is the likelihood of the tickets being validated??
you can always rely on dumb Italians to lose your luggage. My daughter had a 3 hour stop-over, plenty of time for her luggage to transfer, sure enough, it took her 2 days to get it!!
@Moshe: I purchased a ticket with the $318 discount promo and called Alitalia to make sure I wasn’t cancelled. They confirmed I’m still OK. Because if cancelled, I would turn around and buy a similar ticket from them with the 25% promo that I bought for my daughter.
did anyone contact DOT?
El Al will not let you change dates on the cheap ($353. + 150) even with today,s terror attack. Yikes! Oh, they will refund your purchase price:)