Hundreds of Brazilian passengers who bought tickets to Paris in an Iberia promotion were furious after the company canceled the tickets, claiming the discount was a mistake.
The Spanish company offered tickets from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, with a stopover in Madrid, starting at R$1,180 per person, round trip, including taxes.
The tickets also allowed the consumer to make the so-called “stopover” in the Spanish capital — when it is possible to stay for a few days in the connecting city, at no additional cost.
The promotion was released last Tuesday (28), through a ticket discount website, and tickets were sold out in less than ten minutes, according to consumer reports.
On Thursday (30), Iberia canceled tickets both for customers who had purchased tickets directly through the company’s website and for those who compare through Decolar’s website.
The cancellation caused anger among consumers, who began to protest through social networks, with the hashtag #IberiaHonreParis.
The company’s customers even organized themselves into a Telegram group of around 700 people, to plan joint measures to be taken.
One of them is journalist Thiago Ferreira, 29, who is the communication coordinator in a school group in Vitória (ES). He planned to take a vacation to see the French capital in October 2022, on his first international trip since the start of the pandemic.
From Paris, he says he would also go to Luxembourg, Brussels and Amsterdam. “When I saw the supposed promotion on a website specializing in travel discounts, I quickly went to check the prices on the Iberia website and they clicked. I thought: I’m going to take advantage of it and advance the part of the tickets and solve the rest”, he says.
With the confirmation of the purchase of tickets by Iberia, Ferreira says that he started to make plans with friends to reconcile trips during his stay in Europe.
The confusion also hampered the honeymoon plans of lawyer Matheus França, 27, and administrative assistant Caroline de Carli, 25. They will get married on September 17 of next year and had bought travel tickets on the Iberia website on the 19th and back on October 1st.
“It would be my first international trip. My fiancee went to Disney and really wanted to know Europe and the European version of the park. The plan was to go to Paris and stay three days in Madrid”, says the brasiliense.
He says that they even looked at other travel options, as they thought Europe would be out of budget. “When I told her we were going to make it there, she couldn’t believe it. But after they canceled the tickets, we were frustrated, she cried all night.”
PRICE WAS IN DOLLAR, SAYS AIRLINE COMPANY
For passengers, the company claimed that the value of the tickets was actually in dollars, which would be equivalent to R$6,574 — well above the average price outside the promotional rate, which is around R$3,000.
“The reason for the cancellation is that the aforementioned reservation included flights between Brazil and Paris that had been wrongly charged with fares worth one tenth of their actual price”, says the cancellation message sent by the company to passengers.
“Specifically, the fare that was made available was US$118, when its actual price is US$1,180. That US$118 is a price three or four times lower than the cheapest fare offered by Iberia on the same routes, which shows the mistake made.”
“The justification is embarrassing. It’s very difficult to find tickets for this time of year for this time of year above R$4,000 or R$5,000, it’s something out of reality. When I saw the value of the Iberia promotion, I thought it was within the reality,” says Ferreira.
Some of the passengers also argue that the price charged for the Iberia ticket was not far from what was offered in other recent promotions, such as one made by the Portuguese TAP, which charged R$1,500 for the same destination.
In addition, on Iberia’s own website, fares to Madrid appeared at an approximate value of R$ 1,769.
The company also claimed that, if the rate were really promotional, it would have made an advance campaign, but that it will fully reimburse affected customers, both in Brazil and in other South American countries.
Passengers say they are already looking for consumer protection agencies, such as the states’ Procons. Wanted by leaf, the press offices of Iberia and ANAC (National Civil Aviation Agency) had not taken a position on the case until the publication of this text.
A similar case occurred with passengers who bought tickets on Gol in 2019. The Procon-São Paulo Foundation even fined the company R$3.5 million for “infringing the Consumer Defense Code (CDC)” during a promotion in which sold tickets for R$ 3.90.
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