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What do you do if you mistakenly sell something for less than you intended? If you’re US Airways, and you sold a gazillion tickets for $1.86 plus tax, as they did last summer, you take your lumps and honor the tickets. If you’re Travelocity, and you sell tickets to Fiji for $50, you honor the tickets. If you’re Alitalia, and you sell business class tickets for $39, you honor the tickets.
But if you’re cruise line Holland America, and you sell a $1399 cabin for $849, you send your customers a bill for the $550 difference. A month later.

For four whole days in September, the company sold the cabins at the lower rate. In October, customers started getting calls, telling them the price they paid wouldn’t be honored.

Passengers are being given the option of paying up or getting a refund, but they’re not sailing at the price they paid for. And this wasn’t even a $2 or $50 rate. $849, while cheap, is still within the realm of possibility. As I’ve argued before, you can’t blame people for taking advantage of low prices, since you can’t always know if a bargain is a sale or an error.

I could even have understood if the company had nixed the offer within a day or two of booking, but they waited an entire month. The passengers have then potentially already paid their credit card bills, and will have certainly made plans for airfare, pre-departure hotels, etc.

This is unacceptable. Complaints should be filed with the Better Business Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission, and with the credit card company used to pay for the cruise. If booked through an agency or online travel site, you may have some protection there as well.

But above all, realize that Holland America not only has incompetent revenue management, whose mistake should have been caught more quickly than four days after publication. This company has disdain for their customers.

They obviously don’t want your repeat business. It sounds like they just don’t deserve your business in the first place.

Related:
- When are fare errors too good to be true?
- The morality of fare errors
- Too good to be true, or too good to pass up?

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