Just have to share this here because of how unbelievably tone-deaf it is.

I have an upcoming flight with Lufthansa, booked cheapest economy class. Now I get a mail that says I am eligible for an upgrade.

Correction, I am eligible to make an offer to maybe maybe get an upgrade. When I click that link I get to the page above in the screenshot where I can now choose an amount between 90 and 300-ish EUR per passenger, per flight, to maybe upgrade to business class.

Just look at the slider, it is almost hilarious that it says poor when you leave it at the low amounts. Is any other airline doing that?

12 points

Seeing how similar this interface looks in all the examples makes me think this is not something the airlines did come up with themselves, but rather might be a something offered by a third party that they implement in their booking process.

I.e. not only milking the customer as much as possible by having them bid instead of fixed price upgrades, but maybe even having a third party taking a fee or commission, which will ultimately be passed on to the customer through higher prices.

This is just speculation though. Does anyone have insight into this?

permalink
report
reply
1 point

I don’t have any insights but I agree that if there are similar things offered across airlines, even with similar interfaces, then some startup somewhere is probably selling this “key-in-hand” solution, they probably have a sick PowerPoint deck!

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

Seems like a company rolling out a shit idea on April Fools day to have the ability to say it was a joke the next day when backlash inevitably happens.

Expect to see this a lot more the next few years, as companies become even further soulless husks of themselves with decisions being made by AI.

permalink
report
reply
11 points

No April Fools, the mail is a couple days old.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Flew to Iceland and had same thing on BalticAir. I assumed it was gambling and youd lose your money, but now it seems like you might get it refunded and our planes business class was empty.

Seems like it would be a good idea to read the terms and conditions this time and try it for a long off-season flight as business class easily is double the ticket price.

permalink
report
reply
5 points

Had similar experience with air Portugal, I didn’t even bother to click.

permalink
report
reply
1 point

WestJet did this to me recently too. Same UI, same platform. Fuck em.

permalink
report
reply

Enshittification

!enshittification@lemmy.world

Create post

What is enshittification?

The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source

The lifecycle of Big Internet

We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.

Embrace, extend and extinguish

We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.

Community stats

  • 341

    Monthly active users

  • 92

    Posts

  • 1.3K

    Comments