Cheapest guaranteed? Hrush
Cleartrip has always stayed away from offering any sort of guarantee that we offer the cheapest prices. While our flight and hotel prices are often the cheapest, we’ve never felt like we can reliably promise our customers that we’re always the cheapest. Sometimes our prices are the cheapest and sometimes they’re a few bucks more expensive, that’s just the way the travel industry works, there’s too many variables at play.
There’s plenty of businesses, however, that feel the need to offer “cheapest price” guarantees. Since there is no real way to offer this guarantee consistently, these guarantees are loaded with fine print. We took a look at a couple of these guarantees and the fine print that accompanies them.
One of the guarantees we looked at offers you double the price difference on international flights. A look at the fine print reveals a catch or two. You have to first buy the ticket from the company offering the guarantee and then actually go and buy the cheaper ticket you found — you have to buy the ticket twice to qualify for the guarantee.
Ridiculous, since you have to buy the ticket twice, one ticket will have to be cancelled and the airline’s cancellation fees are actually guaranteed to wipe out any savings offered by the “cheapest guaranteed.”
The other guarantee offers one night free at a hotel if you find a cheaper price anywhere else. Once again, the fine print has a couple of tricks–the offer is not valid across all hotels, only on certain properties. The second trick is that if you do find a cheaper price, the price has to be cheaper by Rs. 200 or more. Um, then should it be “cheapest guaranteed except for a couple hundred bucks?”
So, cheapest guaranteed? Or gimmick?
Thank You
I agree some of your competitors might have gimmicky offers, but really you have offered free mobile phones for an air ticket and then failed to honour it for me. Some vague T&C got me there too.
Lets face it – those who live in glass houses…
Correct. There are plenty of brands out there who insist on being transparent. You should look at all your customer communication (and everyone should) from a compliance perspective -
- Am I being completely honest?
- Am I revealing everything that the reader should know?
- Is the proposition simple enough to explain and understand in one sentence?
- If there is a disclaimer, can it be incorporated in the main proposition instead of hiding it under the length legal TnCs or with an asterisk sign?
Really, marketers have no business trying to gip people. You don’t build a brand that way – maybe only a succesfull campaign or two.
Useful post. But most of these businesses don’t realize that customers are well aware about stuff like these and can easily make out the best deals online.