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Before you travel, check your ticket … and uncheck the boxes
By Lauren | July 26, 2010
It’s summer and the economy is bad, which means that people are hunting online for bargain airfares to their favorite vacation destinations. There are a number of sites that offer discounted airfares. However, if you’re not careful to read the fine print, you may pay more than you intended.
It seems that some of the discount travel sites do unwary customers the “courtesy” of automatically tacking travel insurance and other services onto the price of their e-tickets by pre-checking the “yes” box on the electronic order form. Those services don’t come free, and can take a significant bite out of whatever savings a traveler might get by purchasing a plane ticket online. Unwary travelers who fail to read the fine print can get stuck buying unwanted travel insurance or other services unless they remember to uncheck the box asking if they want those extras or not.
Christopher Elliott of The Washington Post called me recently to ask whether I consider it ethical for sellers to pre-check boxes that can cost customers money. Not only do I think that the practice of pre-checking is unethical and obnoxious, I think it deserves to be exposed for the petty con job that it is. So if you know someone who’s about to purchase tickets online, make sure to warn that person to beware of pre-checked boxes. Whether it’s a plane ticket or travel insurance, a purchase is only a bargain if it’s something you want.
To read the Washington Post article, click here.
Topics: Business Ethics, business communications, corporate responsibility, customer relations, ethics |
July 27th, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Well done - let’s ddd companies that include optional fees in ammount due column of a bill - and hope you’ll just look at the total and write the check.
July 27th, 2010 at 10:15 pm
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July 29th, 2010 at 8:38 am
it was very interesting to read http://www.thebusinessethicsblog.com
I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
And you et an account on Twitter?