Fine Print Friday is a weekly column where I examine and analyze Contracts that affect many of us in our daily lives. Each installment will point out a few interesting provisions the average reader may not have noticed.
Fine Print Friday: Travelocity Airline Ticket Purchases
Travelocity is one of the largest online travel reservation sites, with around 13 million site visits per month in 2009. Purchases through third party sites like Travelocity, however, can be confusing for consumers, particularly when it comes to changes in travel schedules by airlines. Since the purchases are made through Travelocity, customers are subject to the terms of both Travelocity and the airline from which they purchased their tickets.
There are really two contracts at play in these situations: The customer agrees to the terms of Travelocity by using their service to search out and pay for the tickets, and the customer also agrees to the terms of the airline on which he or she will be traveling. This week I will look at the agreement made when a customer makes a purchase through Travelocity, and next week I will look at a typical agreement with an airline when one purchases a ticket.
The following are some items of note (applicable to buying a plane ticket) in the Travelocity Price and Service Guarantee, and the Travelocity User Agreement:
1. Price Guarantee: The price guarantee states that if a customer finds a lower price on the same ticket within 24 hours of purchasing with Travelocity, it will refund the difference and provide a $50 voucher for future package purchases there. Of course, Travelocity can decide whether a customer’s claim fits the conditions (the original text reads “as determined by Travelocity in its sole discretion”).
2. Qualifying Lower Rates: The Qualifying Lower Rates (which trigger the price guarantee) do not include rates on websites if all of the details cannot be precisely known prior to the purchase. They also do not include any sort of auction or bidding rates. Qualifying Lower Rates must also be generally available to the public, and cannot come from a website that requires you to call to get a price quote, nor can the rate come from an email. It must also be quoted and booked in U.S. dollars.
3. Submission: By submitting a claim for the price guarantee, a customer automatically agrees by all the terms in the price guarantee’s fine print, and agrees that Travelocity’s decision on the guarantee claim is final.
4. Incorporation of Other Terms: The price guarantee also includes all the terms of the User Agreement, which is on a separate page.
5. Acceptance of User Agreement: The User Agreement is a unilateral contract, meaning that just by using the website, you have agreed to everything in the User Agreement, without having ever seen the User Agreement or expressly accepted it.
6. Pricing Errors: Travelocity can correct pricing errors at any time and can go so far as to change or cancel your reservation to do so. Whereas most places that advertise a price in error need to honor it due to rules on advertising (if it is reasonable), by using their website, you have agreed to not hold Travelocity to that standard. Even if your purchase has been confirmed and your credit card has been charged, they can still alter the price and change or cancel your reservation.
7. Liability Limit: The most that Travelocity can ever be held liable for is that amount a customer paid to them, regardless of any other amount of damage done by them or third parties. So if you buy a plane ticket to head to Europe that arrives just in time for you to board your non-refundable Orient Express train tour for $5,000, your flight time changes, and Travelocity doesn’t notify you of it, so you miss the flight and are out $5,000, the most they can be held accountable for is what you paid them for the plane ticket. Ouch.
8. Dispute Resolution: Any claim under $10,000 is automatically subject to binding arbitration, overseen by Travelocity’s choice of arbiter, in Texas (where Travelocity is based), and Travelocity gets to decide the procedure for the arbitration. Additionally, simply by using the website, you agree to waive any right to a jury trial or any involvement in a class action suit.
Concluding Thoughts
Generally speaking, there is nothing too surprising in Travelocity’s agreements. Limits on liability and mandatory dispute resolution procedures are pretty standard fare. So are unilateral contacts, but I find those to be much more underhanded, particularly when they are hidden.
If Travelocity made visitors click through the User Agreement before they could access the site, that would stand a lot stronger to me in terms of it being binding. As it stands, it’s difficult to find the User Agreement–you have to be looking for it–and it’s not at all clear by reading the first part of it that it has anything to do with actual use of their service. The initial portion has only to do with use of the website and intellectual property concerns; they’ve hidden all the important points at the end.
But more troubling to me is that the User Agreement is not listed as something to which a customer agrees when completing a transaction. Typically, when signing up for a service or buying a product online, a customer needs to check a box stating that he or she agrees to the terms of service. There is none of that with Travelocity, and neither the Price Guarantee or User Agreement is even referenced when making your purchase, as shown in this screen shot:
That Travelocity can even claim that customers have agreed to these contracts when they haven’t been offered is absurd.
I don’t expect that many of the contractual provisions outlined above are all that enforceable–given the way they are written and the way they are hidden from potential customers. That said, by purchasing something through Travelocity, a person has technically agreed to the language in these Terms and Conditions, and it could be fairly argued that the customer is bound by all these terms.
As always, the lesson is to pay attention to what you are agreeing to, and how it might affect you. If you ever have questions about how a contract might affect you, contact me.
That’s all for this Fine Print Friday. Next week, look for the companion to this week’s edition: airline ticket fine print.
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Graham Martin is a solo practitioner focusing on Contract law (including drafting, review, and litigation). He operates Martin Legal Services, LLC in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
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