[otterley]

> Purchasing a good or service with multiple components is not, in and of itself, a representation to the seller of intent to use all the components.

Do you have a legal citation for this? I'm unaware of any law that supports this assertion.

In any event, the representation in question is "I want to fly from city A to city B." It's pretty reasonable for an airline to conclude that when a passenger makes this request, that is in fact their intent, not to fly to city C.

[dragonwriter]

> Do you have a legal citation for this?

As far as I am aware, no one has actually attempted to make a fraud claim on the grounds that mere purchase (and/or the statement of intent to purchase) a composite good or service was a representation by the buyer to the seller of intent to use every portion of the good or service so sold and had the case survive to a published decision on that question.

But, you know, if you can find a case supporting your claim that this intent would clearly be inferred from such an aggregate purchase, I'd love to hear it.

[foton1981]

Damn. If this becomes legal precedent will I be forced to read every page of books I buy?

[brewdad]

And you'd damn well use both items of your Buy One, Get One Free offer. No sharing. No only using half of the second item.

[lordlimecat]

To purchase the ticket you agree to the contract of carriage, which explicitly disallows hidden-city ticketing in section 6, subsection J, paragraph 1. See here: https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/contract-of-carriage.ht...

So when you agree to use the ticket to travel all the way to the final destination, I think that qualifies as a "representation... of intent to use every portion of the good".

[dragonwriter]

I addressed that (assuming that the contract likely covered this) in my first post in this thread: “Even if the contract of carriage has language to that effect, which might give you a breach of contract claim, I don't think you’ll find much support for the use of language in a contract of adhesion as a representation by the non-drafting party for fraud claim.”

[p49k]

The representation in question is "I want to buy a ticket that allows me to fly from City A to City B, stopping in City C."

[otterley]

The declaration of intent is made before the stopover city is revealed to the prospective buyer. You don’t get to specify a stopover city when you select your origin and destination; only after those are entered is the routing revealed to the customer.

[p49k]

I hope you can take a step back and see the absurdity of your argument. Using a search engine in one particular way doesn’t imply intent, nor does buying something that’s not exactly what you need.

Airlines can’t have it both ways: if they wanted to, they could make customers pony up a “trajectory abandonment” deposit, or force customers through an interstitial in which they explicitly agree to extra charges, or something similar, but they want the financial/competitive advantage that comes with the customer not having any worries (i.e. being clueless) about being charged for missing or not taking a connection.

[otterley]

We’re talking about a situation in which the customer already knows they want to go to city B. If they’re being truthful up front, city B is the destination they’ll be putting in the destination box when searching for tickets, and they will get a routing to that destination without any additional segments when they do so (assuming, of course, that the route is possible).

[kryogen1c]

Your argument seems absurd to me. The price break exists because it's a good deal for airline and long distance flier. Abusing this system only ends in two ways: airlines punish short-stoppers, or raise prices on everyone.

[Someone1234]

> Do you have a legal citation for this? I'm unaware of any law that supports this assertion.

One could argue the same about every post you've made on this topic thus far. You're arguing that simply the act of buying something is a representation, which can then result in misrespections ala fraud, but you've provided no legal citations and the one citation you have provided was about contractual agreements which aren't in scope here.

[otterley]

The reason I'm not citing anything is because there's nothing to cite. The (mis)representation in this case is crystal clear: "I want to fly to city B."

[johnm1019]

I completely disagree it's crystal clear.

How does buying something indicate your intent, wants, or wishes? If I buy a can of spray-paint, the store has no idea if I am using it to paint my child's bicycle, tag graffiti, use it as a weapon and hit someone on the head, or as part of a wonderful "Rube Goldberg" device which at the end an implement hits the sprayhead which sprays through a bright white light as part of performance art.

Another example, a true story: yesterday I visited an ice cream store with my friend. She wanted a scoop with chocolate sauce, and I wanted just a scoop. 1 scoop was 4.29+tax. A 3 scoop sundae with chocolate, nuts, and strawberry-sauce was 7.98+tax. Even though we only wanted 2 scoops we got the sundae because it was cheaper and scooped the strawberry-sauce off and into the trash (crazy I know, we don't like it). Did we defraud the ice cream store?

People buy "more than they need" all the time, and purchasing a good provides no intent as to what one wants or how they wish to use it.

[otterley]

Facts and circumstances matter; not every case is comparable. In the specific case of buying airplane tickets, it’s reasonable for a carrier to infer intent to travel to a particular destination from the user’s input.

[lordlimecat]

>How does buying something indicate your intent, wants, or wishes?

Because when you buy a united ticket you agree to a contract of carriage that specifically says you will use the ticket in its entirety.

[cft]

Note that this contract is not a law: i would be surprised if it stood in court. According to it, if I feel sick and terminate my flight at the stopover, of if I learn of a business emergency and I have to go back, I am still in breach of this ridiculous contract?

And what makes it most ridiculous is this: "Any practice that United believes, in its sole discretion, is exploitative, abusive or that manipulates/bypasses/overrides United’s fare and ticket rules."

Can they ban me from United- yes. Can they try to collect money and threaten me with a credit dent? They can, until they ran into a lawyer or into a motivated person with time and resources on their hands.

[lordlimecat]

Contracts have to be argued in court, but you're going to have a tough time arguing that case on a contract whose terms you intended to breach even as you agreed to them.

[otterley]

Impossibility is a defense to a breach of contract. And let’s not be silly; United’s not going to go after you for unintentional breach due to illness. Come on, use some common sense.

[dragonwriter]

That's why there's a decent case for a breach of contract claim (subject to all the concerns that usually apply with contracts of adhesion.)

But the language of a contract of adhesion doesn't seem likely to be taken as a representation by the non-drafting party in a fraud case.

[bfdm]

I don't want to fly anywhere. I want to buy a plane ticket with my name on it good for travel to B if I decide I want to do that later.

[otterley]

The law doesn’t care about your subjective intent; it will be interpreted objectively, according to the facts and circumstances that can be observed externally of the interaction between you and the carrier. This is a basic tenet of contract law.