My car was broken into last night. Well, actually that's not true. My car was somehow entered last night by somebody without my knowledge, but there was actually no breaking involved. All my windows are intact, and the doors aren't pried open, but somehow everything inside my glove box ended up on the street. The most probably scenario is that I forgot to lock the doors, and some no-goodnik realized this and metaphorically seized the opportunity to literally seize my belongings. Once he (or she, but c'mon, it was a dude) saw that I had nothing of real value in my car (other than the car seats, which, I assume, required too much effort to move), he dumped everything under a trailer randomly parked on my street and fled the scene.
I didn't even notice it when I took the kids to school (the glove box was shut; everything looked normal), but about 10 a.m. I got a knock on my door from my neighbor. He was holding the little folder in which I keep my insurance card, and he was like, "Uhhh... I think your car got broken into." He thought it was strange that a trailer was parked on our street (because it is), so he went to check it out and noticed all my stuff under it. Everything from my glove box appeared to be there -- papers, manuals, an iPhone charger, an umbrella, even two ballpoint pens. They also left the $2.67 I have in coins in the console drink holder. Lucky me!
The trailer is gone now and seems to be unrelated to the crime other than it was the most convenient dumping ground. I just put my stuff back in the glove box, made sure the doors were locked, went back inside, and went about my day. What else was there to do? I suppose I could report it to the police. I probably should do that, but it seems like such a hassle for something that ended up being little more than a slight inconvenience. Don't get me wrong, it's disturbing that we have thieves prowling the streets in our neighborhood, but unfortunately that's pretty much how it goes in D.C. in almost any neighborhood. That's why you don't keep anything of value in your car and why you always lock your doors. I'm actually very surprised that I forgot to lock them. Usually I'm overly anal about it. In fact, it's so unlike me that I'm halfway inclined to think there is some other explanation. But there probably isn't -- Occam's razor, see.
Anyway, in other news, I'm sure you heard about that foofaraw on the United flight about a week ago -- you know, the one in which that doctor got his head smashed in and his belly exposed as he was literally dragged off a flight to which he had purchased a valid ticket and on which he had already been seated, because United needed his seat so that they could transport some crew members so that a different flight could takeoff. That one. Everyday seems to have a take on it. Here's mine.
The solution to this, as many have pointed out, is mind-numbingly easy: Jack up the value of the vouchers until you get a taker. They stopped at $800. My guess is once they got up to $1,000, certainly if they went up to $1,500 or $2,000, somebody would have taken it. So in order to save a few hundred, maybe a thousand dollars, United cost themselves n times that in bad publicity and a likely lawsuit -- not too smart. And I've seen it reported that they couldn't have gone above $1,300 by law, but then I read something by a lawyer who said this isn't true because that's only for involuntary removal. If it's voluntary -- which, if you make the incentive large enough, it would be -- then there's no law preventing an airline from offering whatever they want. And even if $1,300 was the limit, they stopped at $800, so it's not a good defense, anyway.
The other thing about this that I haven't heard mentioned that much, but is important, is that the airlines aren't offering actually money. They're offering vouchers to be used at some time in the future that often come with strings attached. Customers are learning that the vouchers aren't actually worth anything close to their stated value. If airlines offered actual money -- cash or Visa gift cards or something like that -- people would be much, much more inclined to give up their seats. I guarantee it.
My fix, if I was advising United on how to go forward, would be to offer cash, and to hold an auction when this happens. Whoever is willing to get off for the least amount of money wins. Maybe you could even do it when you buy your ticket. There's a little checkbox that says "In the unlikely event we need a volunteer to give up his or her seat, I would be willing to do so for $____."
I've heard others say that airlines just shouldn't be able to overbook. In this case that wouldn't have mattered because the issue wasn't overbooking, but the need to move crew members so that a different flight could take off. And it's not unreasonable to inconvenience a few people so that a flight of hundreds can take off on time. United apparently was scrambling all weekend due to weather-related cancellations and delays. (How they handled "inconveniencing" people, however, was completely unreasonable, to say the least.) Also, we the customers bear some of the responsibility for overbooking as a general practice, as we often miss flights or change our plans at the last minute and demand refunds. Without overbooking, the airlines have to accept a loss every time this happens, which means they have to charge us more.
Of course, they could in theory also just eat these losses and be less profitable. But while that sounds good, the truth is, airlines actually aren't very profitable as it is. They're not investments banks. They provide an incredible service -- getting across the entire nation in a matter or hours -- but also an extremely costly one. And their customer base does not always appreciate this latter point. We all want airlines to offer us better service, but we don't want to pay for it. People think air travel is expensive, but it's actually much cheaper than it used to be. We drive the market this way. Matt Yglesias at Vox wrote a very interesting article speaking to this. It's really a great breakdown of the general economics of air travel. I highly recommend it. But if you're not going to read the entire thing, I will leave you a quote from it.
Am I getting ripped off? Am I sucker? Maybe. But I don't waste my time with any of that stuff, and I'm much happier because of it. So if that makes me a sucker, then you can lick me up and down and call me Dum Dum.
Until next time...
I didn't even notice it when I took the kids to school (the glove box was shut; everything looked normal), but about 10 a.m. I got a knock on my door from my neighbor. He was holding the little folder in which I keep my insurance card, and he was like, "Uhhh... I think your car got broken into." He thought it was strange that a trailer was parked on our street (because it is), so he went to check it out and noticed all my stuff under it. Everything from my glove box appeared to be there -- papers, manuals, an iPhone charger, an umbrella, even two ballpoint pens. They also left the $2.67 I have in coins in the console drink holder. Lucky me!
The trailer is gone now and seems to be unrelated to the crime other than it was the most convenient dumping ground. I just put my stuff back in the glove box, made sure the doors were locked, went back inside, and went about my day. What else was there to do? I suppose I could report it to the police. I probably should do that, but it seems like such a hassle for something that ended up being little more than a slight inconvenience. Don't get me wrong, it's disturbing that we have thieves prowling the streets in our neighborhood, but unfortunately that's pretty much how it goes in D.C. in almost any neighborhood. That's why you don't keep anything of value in your car and why you always lock your doors. I'm actually very surprised that I forgot to lock them. Usually I'm overly anal about it. In fact, it's so unlike me that I'm halfway inclined to think there is some other explanation. But there probably isn't -- Occam's razor, see.
Anyway, in other news, I'm sure you heard about that foofaraw on the United flight about a week ago -- you know, the one in which that doctor got his head smashed in and his belly exposed as he was literally dragged off a flight to which he had purchased a valid ticket and on which he had already been seated, because United needed his seat so that they could transport some crew members so that a different flight could takeoff. That one. Everyday seems to have a take on it. Here's mine.
The solution to this, as many have pointed out, is mind-numbingly easy: Jack up the value of the vouchers until you get a taker. They stopped at $800. My guess is once they got up to $1,000, certainly if they went up to $1,500 or $2,000, somebody would have taken it. So in order to save a few hundred, maybe a thousand dollars, United cost themselves n times that in bad publicity and a likely lawsuit -- not too smart. And I've seen it reported that they couldn't have gone above $1,300 by law, but then I read something by a lawyer who said this isn't true because that's only for involuntary removal. If it's voluntary -- which, if you make the incentive large enough, it would be -- then there's no law preventing an airline from offering whatever they want. And even if $1,300 was the limit, they stopped at $800, so it's not a good defense, anyway.
The other thing about this that I haven't heard mentioned that much, but is important, is that the airlines aren't offering actually money. They're offering vouchers to be used at some time in the future that often come with strings attached. Customers are learning that the vouchers aren't actually worth anything close to their stated value. If airlines offered actual money -- cash or Visa gift cards or something like that -- people would be much, much more inclined to give up their seats. I guarantee it.
My fix, if I was advising United on how to go forward, would be to offer cash, and to hold an auction when this happens. Whoever is willing to get off for the least amount of money wins. Maybe you could even do it when you buy your ticket. There's a little checkbox that says "In the unlikely event we need a volunteer to give up his or her seat, I would be willing to do so for $____."
I've heard others say that airlines just shouldn't be able to overbook. In this case that wouldn't have mattered because the issue wasn't overbooking, but the need to move crew members so that a different flight could take off. And it's not unreasonable to inconvenience a few people so that a flight of hundreds can take off on time. United apparently was scrambling all weekend due to weather-related cancellations and delays. (How they handled "inconveniencing" people, however, was completely unreasonable, to say the least.) Also, we the customers bear some of the responsibility for overbooking as a general practice, as we often miss flights or change our plans at the last minute and demand refunds. Without overbooking, the airlines have to accept a loss every time this happens, which means they have to charge us more.
Of course, they could in theory also just eat these losses and be less profitable. But while that sounds good, the truth is, airlines actually aren't very profitable as it is. They're not investments banks. They provide an incredible service -- getting across the entire nation in a matter or hours -- but also an extremely costly one. And their customer base does not always appreciate this latter point. We all want airlines to offer us better service, but we don't want to pay for it. People think air travel is expensive, but it's actually much cheaper than it used to be. We drive the market this way. Matt Yglesias at Vox wrote a very interesting article speaking to this. It's really a great breakdown of the general economics of air travel. I highly recommend it. But if you're not going to read the entire thing, I will leave you a quote from it.
In the long run, for air travel to be better, passengers would have to pay for it. And decades’ worth of evidence suggests we prefer cheap and safe to pleasant.I found this to be true not just in air travel, but in many walks of American consumerism. Everything is about the deal; you always have to get the best deal possible. You know what I say to that? Fuck the deal! When I wanted a new TV, I didn't shop around. I didn't compare prices online. I walked straight into Best Buy, picked one off the shelf and bough it. It took me 15 minutes. When I got a new car, did I haggle with the salesperson? No sir. I paid sticker price and went on my way. I don't do airplane miles; I don't have any reward cards; I don't do credit card points (well, technically I do, because S and I have a joint card, but she set it up); I don't even have a Wegman's card and I shop there almost every other day!
Am I getting ripped off? Am I sucker? Maybe. But I don't waste my time with any of that stuff, and I'm much happier because of it. So if that makes me a sucker, then you can lick me up and down and call me Dum Dum.
Until next time...
How do you get a refund when you miss or cancel your flight? I know airlines might compensate if it's on them, but my understanding is once you buy that ticket, unless you pay for travel insurance, that's it, the airline has your money whether you use the ticket or not. Is that not the case?
ReplyDeleteI think each airline has different rules under different circumstances, but the larger point is that empty seats are inefficient and have some cost associated with them (as it says in the article "Customers also value the opportunity to reschedule flights for less than the full price of buying a brand new ticket."). This cost will get passed down.
DeleteIt's an inefficient process all around and needs serious re-vamping from the ground up. There's a reason airlines are always struggling and folding and merging. Air travel has become an integral part of our culture. What used to be a luxury experience has now become an inescapable fact of life and it's time to figure out how to turn the experience into a win/win for both passengers and airlines.
Delete