zwiebel
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- Oct 1, 2012
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United Airlines has advertised first class tickets from Europe to NY for just $50, by mistake. The real price is nearer $9,000. The error only appeared on its Danish site, but quickly came to the attention of budget travel bookers and blogs, who quickly switched their bookings to Denmark and helped spread the word.
When United finally noticed, thousands of tickets had been sold. It's canceled all of them, and blames the mistake on its software provider. I suspect the software (or human) error was caused by the difference between the mainland European and American/UK way of writing cash figures; Europeans use a comma where Americans and Brits use a decimal point. This can be confusing for computers. Example:
Ten thousand dollars and fifty cents: $10,000.50
Ten thousand Euros and fifty cents: €10.000,50
Anyway, though the Airline fixed the mistake Wednesday, it forget to notify whoever runs its twitter feed, which carried on blithely congratulating people on their bargains for a while, Lol.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ope-but-they-wont-get-you-anywhere/?tid=sm_tw
https://mobile.twitter.com/united
When United finally noticed, thousands of tickets had been sold. It's canceled all of them, and blames the mistake on its software provider. I suspect the software (or human) error was caused by the difference between the mainland European and American/UK way of writing cash figures; Europeans use a comma where Americans and Brits use a decimal point. This can be confusing for computers. Example:
Ten thousand dollars and fifty cents: $10,000.50
Ten thousand Euros and fifty cents: €10.000,50
Anyway, though the Airline fixed the mistake Wednesday, it forget to notify whoever runs its twitter feed, which carried on blithely congratulating people on their bargains for a while, Lol.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ope-but-they-wont-get-you-anywhere/?tid=sm_tw
https://mobile.twitter.com/united
