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United Airlines: Hurry, Only 4 Seats Left?

If you were planning a trip and were warned by the airline that the flights you were thinking of taking only had four seats left at the price you found, you might be prompted to book immediately, right?

Well, it seems that United Airlines has taken to giving passengers such a warning on their website. For example, on the flights between Boston and Washington, DC leaving on October 27 and returning on October 29, a notice appeared warning that only four seats remain at the outrageous price of $497 plus taxes/fees for a particular flight. [See separate previous story about this high fare.] I better grab my seats, I thought to myself, before the price gets even higher.

Thinking that there might be more seats available on alternate flights the same day, I starting clicking all the various flight options shown.

*MOUSE PRINT:




As you can see, no matter what flight combination was chosen, whether it be six in the morning or nine at night, “only” four seats were left on EVERY flight in either direction. Coincidence? I think not. It looks like United is using a bit of a scare tactic, not unlike that used by timeshare hucksters — “this deal is available today only, if you delay, you will miss out”. 

Since MrConsumer was going to fly to DC anyway, he decided to test United’s system to see if they were displaying an actual count of seats left.  At the time of the test, it was not obvious that these were “code-share” flights actually operated by US Airways.

Below is the flight selection screen MrConsumer saw just prior to booking his flights. Note that supposedly only four seats are left at the price shown.

And here is a new fare selection page moments after one of the four remaining seats was purchased:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Hmmm… still only four seats available at the posted price after I bought one of them. Hmmmm. Incidentally, a check of their website three days later revealed the same “only 4 seats left” warning for all flights.

Mouse Print* asked United Airlines for an explanation of how it could be that “only 4 seats” were left on all these flights, and that the number did not decrease when a ticket was purchased.

“First, we are able to book certain codeshare partners (e.g., US Airways) on united.com, however we can only view 4 seats of their inventory at a time, when in fact there may be more available.  This is a technical constraint.”  — United media relations

It seems to me that United should not be displaying their “only 4 tickets left” warning when they know that it is not an accurate statement of the actual number of seats remaining on the flight.

It is not known how accurate these seat availability warnings are on regular United flights.

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Capital One’s 10% Savings Bonus Catch

Capital One Bank has just begun a major national advertising campaign on TV with comic Jerry Stiller and in full page newspaper ads touting its high interest savings rate compared to “bupkus” [nothing] paid by competitors.

In addition to paying 1.35% interest, you also get a 10% quarterly bonus on the amount of interest earned in the previous quarter.

capone

If you click the above ad, you will see unreadable mouse print under the bank’s name. Even looking at the original ad, the text is almost unreadable because of its size, faint color and weight of the font, and the fact that it is printed on a striped background doesn’t help either.

What does the fine print say?

*MOUSE PRINT:

Besides requiring a $1000 minimum balance to get the advertised interest rate, it also imposes some unexpected conditions in order to receive the advertised bonus interest:

“To receive the bonus, your account must be open and you either must maintain an average balance of $10,000 each month in your account or own an active Capital One credit card in good standing with at least one transaction per calendar month.”

This is a pretty significant requirement to bury — that you need $10,000+ to earn the bonus interest. And it is not like they didn’t have enough space in this full page ad to disclose it upfront clearly.

So, how much will MrConsumer deposit at Capital One because of this deception? Bupkis.

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CVS: From Ad to Checkout, Promised Discounts Disappear

Last Friday, CVS sent out an email to customers offering “20% off your entire purchase in store or online*”.

*MOUSE PRINT:

“The 20% sale cannot be combined with another product sale running at the same time. You will receive the larger discount.” — disclaimer for online coupon use.

“*Excludes sale items.” — disclaimer for in-store coupon use.

Those exclusions are pretty limiting considering your “entire purchase” really is not covered.  What makes them worse was the fact that those disclosures were not made anywhere in the email itself. You had to visit CVS.com to find them out.

Still worse were the seeming 40% off discounts promised off the regular price of “Red Hot Deals” featured on the landing page of CVS.com:

cvs

MrConsumer placed those three 40% items in his cart, but when checking the cart, the 40% discounts had completely disappeared. Well, maybe the right sale prices only show up when you are about to checkout?

*MOUSE PRINT:

Nope. Even on the very last page of the ordering process after providing a credit card number, all the 40% off items remained at full price. Had MrConsumer clicked the “submit order” button there, he would have been charged $42.47 for items that had been advertised for $25.47. That’s an overcharge of $17.  This is the online equivalent of a scanner error where the store sign promised 40% off, but the items scanned regular price at the cash register.

CVS subsequently corrected their error, but who knows how many people might have been overcharged in the interim.

The lesson here is that just because an item is advertised on a website for a particular price, you must double-check to see whether that is the price that is actually charged once the item is in your cart and you are at the checkout.