United WILL NOT Honor “Mistake Fares”

This morning, United’s Denmark website priced many tickets at incredible low prices, including flights on Lufthansa, Swiss, and United’s own First Class. Though only itineraries departing Europe and “booked from Denmark” saw the price drop, many took advantage of the “mistake fare” as an opportunity to travel in premium cabins on the cheap by changing their country to Denmark. Travelers reported that inputing a U.S. billing address while leaving the country as “Denmark” would allow the booking to go through with no problem.

For the most part, United ticketed all booked itineraries shortly after the reservations were made.

United has stayed mostly silent during the day, with the exception of a tweet in the morning, in response to an inquiry:

We are looking into an issue whereby a third-party software provider applied an incorrect exchange rate for tickets sold from our Danish website. We have temporarily suspended sales from the Denmark website we’re working to resolve the issue with the provider.

Twitter (@United)

Shortly after the tweet, United removed “Denmark” from its selection of countries, and all attempts to price itinerary in Danish Kronor were automatically routed to the US site, which didn’t suffer from the error. As of this posting, Denmark is still not an available option from United’s “point of purchase” list.

United has now issued a statement saying that the mistake fares had resulted from a third-party placing incorrect currency conversion rate from US dollars to Danish Kronor, and that United has filed the fares correctly. As a result, they will be voiding bookings from travelers who took advantage of the mistake.

United is voiding the bookings of several thousand individuals who were attempting to take advantage of an error a third-party software provider made when it applied an incorrect currency exchange rate, despite United having properly filed its fares. Most of these bookings were for travel originating in the United Kingdom, and the level of bookings made with Danish Kroner as the local currency was significantly higher than normal during the limited period that customers made these bookings.

From United Hub

So it looks like United will not be honoring those mistake fares after all. Did you get in on the mistake fare? Do you think United should honor them?

UPDATE

While most got in on this fare by manually selecting Denmark as the country of purchase, and purchasing the fare by using a U.S. credit card, it seems that United is cracking down universally on tickets purchased in Danish Kronor. A good friend of mine, who lives in Denmark, purchased one of these fares with her Danish credit card. Unfortunately, she was frustrated to find that her previously confirmed ticket is also canceled.