Southwest DING’ed for false advertising
Southwest has been DING!ed.
The US Department of Transportation yesterday fined Southwest Airlines $200,000 for promoting low fares that in one case didn’t exist and in another weren’t available on enough seats.
Following up on a customer complaint, DOT’s Office of Aviation Enforcement found that a January "Luv a Fare Sale" advertised one-way, nonstop fares "for $100 or less," but "Southwest failed to have a reasonable number of seats available in a number of city-pair markets that were included in the fare sale."
For example, in the Atlanta-Las Vegas market only 2% of seats were made available at the sale fare and in the Minneapolis-Phoenix market only 1% of the seats were available.
Later in January, Southwest’s "DING!" app offered $66 one-way fares from Dallas, Texas, to Branson, Missouri, though no seats were available at that fare on any day during the sale period.
"By advertising fares for which a reasonable number of seats were not available and advertising fares that were not available at all," DOT said, "Southwest engaged in unfair and deceptive practices in violation of 49 U.S.C. § 41712."
In response, Southwest noted that it made sale fares available in 786 nonstop city-pairs, constituting approximately 79% percent of all such markets that Southwest served at the time, and that overall, less than 10% percent of the city-pairs were sold out at the end of the sale.
Southwest also claimed that technical glitches with the Dallas-Branson DING! offer were responsible for preventing the sale fares from being available to consumers as Southwest had intended.
The errors were unintentional and safeguards have been put in place to ensure such errors do not occur again, it said.
In a settlement to avoid a trial, Southwest agreed to a $200,000 fine, without admitting or denying the violations; it is to pay $100,000 within 30 days and another $100,000 if it violates the order’s cease and desist provisions within the next year.
Cheryl
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