Price goug...
As the demand goes up so do prices.
You believe that businesses should price their goods and services at or below cost during an emergency?
If they don’t like the prices they can drive. What are they doing flying out of Florida anyway? If it were me I would be driving my vehicles out of there so they don’t get flood damage. I would also leave today at latest. My daughter is driving out of Florida today. Traffic will be rough but such is life.
It’s not just the airlines whose CEOs and CFOs are having orgasms all over their bottom lines.
A store in Houston was caught charging $42 for a case of bottled water. They only came off of it after pictures went viral on social media. Just think about how many got away with it and are getting away with it.
So what where they supposed to do John? Reroute every single plane to Miami so that prices would stay low? Or hold a lottery for all the people who wanted to fly so that getting a flight wasn’t based on paying a higher ticket price? And then what if your daughter wasn’t one of the ones who won the lottery?
Airline prices are based on computer algorithms that have nothing to do with gouging and everything to do with demand. I bet airline employees have nothing to do with setting prices.
Jacking the price of water wayyyyyy up in a time of crisis is unethical. yes, the laws of supply and demand are in effect still, and your demand is about to way outstrip your supply, so why not raise prices, right? Not only do you make more of a profit off of your limited supply but you also help assure that people don’t buy too much and resell it on the street, or horde it away from others. However, water is essential to survival, so you really just need to enact a limit on the number sold to each customer. You can’t gouge.
However, airline flights are a luxury!
...and yes, demand is about to go way up.
But you can’t limit the number of flights to a customer. They can basically only get one per customer anyway, unless they fly right back in.
This is completely different. The airlines should be permitted to raise prices commensurate with demand.
Demand goes up, supply remains constant, the prices go up. Basic macroeconomics.
Price goug...
I work in a hotel and had some Harvey evacuees with their pets and I guess the dogs peed and crapped in the room and they were charged the clean up fee and the guests blamed Harvey and that they shouldn’t have been charged.
My favorite though is the guest who put a plastic ice bag over the smoke detector and was mad that he was charged $250 for smoking in the room. He adamantly stressed that he did not smoke in the room, while there was a pile of butts in the trash can.
I am not going to assume this is price gouging - at least not more than any other time of the year. I fly a fair amount and I always try to buy my tickets in advance, the few times I was force to either buy or change a ticket at the last minute the price had often gone up by 3-5X what it would have been had I bought earlier.
Of course lots of folks are going to think because its an ‘emergency’, they should be entitled to free stuff, i.e. someone else should pay for it.
Airline companies are at the bottom of the bottom.
They’re even more corrupt than Microsoft.
“The article goes on to say Delta is price gouging also. “
The airlines must all be run by Rahm “Never let a Crisis Go to Waste” Emanuel.
Pi$$ on all of them, like the Congress, the country would be a lot better off if all the the US Airlines were given enemas, and all their management went down the drain.
“I logged in last night and saw $159.20 to be exact. I said you know what; this ticket is so cheap, I’m just going to buy it.”
So he wasn’t gouged. As a matter in fact he says his ticket was cheap meaning he paid less than he thought it was worth.
I have paid $1,000k for last minute tickets to places just 200 miles from me.
...... Over night they got together with 30 other people and pooled their money to charter a private plane to Lauderdale. It's going to be tight because there are now rumors that the Airport may already be shuttered.
Good luck on getting a rental car or train. Although I would think that the rental car companies will be happy to get cars out of the storm’s path.
She should start biking or walking.
Looking at the story, I am shocked the price isn’t more.
I sometimes have to fly on short notice. I have paid more for a shorter flight.
Airlines have been price-gouging last minute tickets for as long as I can remember.