1. This is not a new question - what authority does a CSR have? Is she the owner that she can be mochel? If they are told that ppl can make changes etc. so that is what they are doing. They can be apologetic.
2. It looks stupid to put ads in the paper etc. it looks bad for the company so that still does not prove that they are mochel.
3. I asked before - if the tickets would be for $100 then would you still have the same taanos? You are pointing out that there was not such a huge loss as estimated by some. L'maase - do you really think/know that they had no loss? What about the seats over chanuka time? You are conjecturing that it is not so bad because of all the different reasons but it does not mean that there was no loss to them. Is there a difference to you if they lost $2M or 500k?
4. Please don't get so offended by what a Rav said about you, taking offense and demanding mechila. I don't know you personally but if you can, let it go. He surely did not mean it personally against you. He could have called you before. Are you on white pages with a phone number? Is that your house in the attached pic? You could have called him before you wrote the OP. What's done is done. IMHO, do not feel so bad, call him, whatever, but do not get mad at him.
Shalom al Yisroel (Yesterday's daf?)
I know this is an argument I can't win with most people as this man obviously knows more halacha and torah than I will even forget. However I do have issues and forgive me for airing them.
1. If El Al wanted they could've instructed their employees to allow guilty people to cancel.
2. Look stupid? I think many frum people would respect El Al if they went to a respected Rov to get a ruling on ona'ah and publicized it that they are being forced in the matter and really don't mean it.
3. I am conjecturing?!?
With all due respect my entire point here is that Rabbi Marburger is the one conjecturing.
He conjectured that I directly caused a loss to my own brother of millions upon millions of dollars when:
A. I guarantee you there is no such loss. This is not some good being made and sold at a loss or hiring of a wagon driver to take just you at a loss.
Most people have switched to the nonstop flight with capacity controls put into place onto each flight (with flights expected to sell out not being offered at all) so that there is practically no marginal cost of flying someone and the $480-$680 they paid with the upgrade fee is actually a nice profit on customers who otherwise would never have flown to Israel, let alone nonstop on El Al.
Why doesn't El Al always charge $480-$680? Because there are lots of people willing to pay far more than that to fly nonstop, but those people aren't the ones who were interested in this deal at all and they'll still be buying full fare tickets. But if they always had this price for a nonstop then who woul pay the big bucks? It's better for El Al to normally charge $1,000-$1,500 to fly nonstop and have a plane 80% full then it is to charge $580 and fill a plane. However it's even better for El Al to charge $580 and fill 20% of a plane and charge $1,000-$1,500 to the folks who normally do pay extra to fly nonstop on them and fill the entire plane.
Airlines have sales and pricing rules that restrict people who normally pay full fare from getting a dirt cheap ticket as they need a mix of people paying full fares AND people paying dirt cheap to turn a profit. With either of those people alone they could not make a profit. That is a fact and is the reaon airline pricing is so crazy and changes by the minute.
This one time solution may even
help El Al's bottom line as they found a solution to capture an entirely new audience. And who knows, maybe they'll discover why it's worth paying El Al $1,000 to fly nonstop in the future (better kosher meals?) and perhaps this is why they are being very flexible with changes and being much kinder than other airlines normally are.
It's a complicated system with complicated pricing. But there's a reason Jetblue for example flew me to Boston for $20. Because it's an additional $20 in their pocket which is better than nothing and as long as they avoid having regular business people buying that fare,
making money in this fixed cost business can't create a loss just because I didn't pay the regular fare.B. He conjectured that I caused a loss to yidden. Please prove that it's yidden and not the contractor.
C. He conjectured without having even the slightest amount of dan l'kaf z'chus or care for L"H or being MS"R that I did this with evil intentions, castigated me for having the wrong outlook in life, and all that without bothering to ask me what I was thinking about the deal or about my expertise in the world of airline pricing. Or ask any experts in the field of airline priving at least, and don't say that you don't know what the cost of a ticket is when making public shame sessions! I have a public email address on my site and plenty of news orgs managed to find it just fine and I provided my number to them happily.
4. It all seemed very personal and directed to me. I don't think you can ask me not to take offense to what someone else says.
I could have called him? What he said already uploaded and making it's way around the internet. How would calling address the public nature of what he did? The shots were already fired and I felt the need to defend my stance, whether people agree with me or not.
And what the heck does my house have to with this discussion?? Unless someone stuck a for sale sign in the yard it's not mine.
Again, I have great respect for his torah knowledge, but that particular lecture seemed premature to me and not fully researched IMHO.
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