Sunday, February 08, 2009

Yapta

This Yapta thing is pretty cool.

If you purchase plane tickets, you enter the information on Yapta and they track whether your ticket price goes up or down. If it goes down, they email you and you get the benefit of the lower price. Just what kind of benefit depends on the airline.

I have Yapta tracking our London tickets and last week, I got an email that the price had increased. Well, ok, so I feel like at least I got in at a lower price.

Until yesterday, when I got an email that the price had dropped, fairly significantly. $225 for the two of us. So, as instructed by Yapta, I immediately got on the phone to United.

Now, I'm pretty sure (at least I've done so in the past) that I could have rebooked the itinerary at the lower fare and gotten a refund. But there would have been a rebooking fee of somewhere between $100 and $150 so my refund would have been less the rebooking fee.

Instead, Daniel at United is going to mail me a travel voucher for the full price difference between the two fares, with no penalty.

This is a win-win as far as I'm concerned. United gets to keep the money they already have and likely make more when I book with my travel voucher. I don't mind having a credit with United since the two airports that I fly in and out of most frequently, Denver and Aspen, are both mainly served by United.

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