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All Things Digital’s Arik Hesseldahl on the airline’s recovery efforts after double-billing many of its customers.
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Well with a nightmare for consumers trying to -- southwest airline tickets over the weekend.
And at half price promotion.
That went awry and I mean completely Iraq thousands of southwest customers were accidentally build multiple times for a single flight.
So will the same thing happen the next time you book a flight Aircastle well senior editor for all things digital is here it's always great to see you here narrative so let's be clear about what happened here so.
Southwest trying to do a promotion celebrating the fact that they had three million FaceBook friends.
Now it's not unusual.
To use something like this is an excuse to have a big a deal a deal lots of -- -- way you try to get consumers' attention obviously is what they were trying to do.
What happened and -- it excusable.
Well what they did was they said we're gonna have our three million.
FaceBook like it which is not an incredibly interest in metric on and social media as things go -- -- -- uses an excuse to have a prussian.
In what they didn't do apparently was they didn't plan apparently what they knew what customers -- do is it would click through and it would buy tickets to save a few dollars on on a discount ticket.
And what would happen is that the web site slowed to a crawl because of all the sudden spike in demand.
And some people would get frustrated and they would click submit submit submit over again and some people one person told the Associated Press.
You have -- seventy dollars twenty different times that -- -- -- checking account she's map.
Well you know as an excuse what is -- a hard thing to do I would think it -- These days everybody knows how to do that right in.
In -- 21 century there are companies that exist that know exactly how to give you on demand quick.
Demand quick capacity.
Somebody didn't plan for the for the spike in demand there -- companies like Amazon.
-- mind.
IBM numerous companies -- can help you plan for these sorts of things right this is the sort of thing and I'm not I don't know exactly what happened we're still waiting a lot of the technical details.
But this is a sort of thing that a senior executive -- -- -- for really fast.
Well they did take quick action apparently they had people come on board and try to set this right -- -- a lot of customers who were in this boat got immediate response yes tells.
Good on them exactly what's happening but we're gonna see a little twentieth century thinking going on here to.
But but good on on on southwest air for trying to make this right they have identified all the multiple billed customers.
-- gonna make -- right for you -- pay their overdraft fees for the times when they might have but they're checking account can't get drain because of the multiple Billings.
And so but there's still a long waiting period for getting that money back that's because of certain laws and things but the other thing is that they're doing is they're asking people to facts.
Information in any documentation that they have descending and by facts which to me is such a thing as bell -- what are we like 1980 and saying exactly.
Yeah exactly so but you know to their credit they are trying to make it right.
That southwest shares fell on this news and then rebounded I think we I don't look at professional investors like the response they saw that.
What -- -- -- for consumers out there who are worried that this might happen that when you are buying something.
Never hit the submit button more than -- never ever ever as -- that's what happened a lot of the cases here.
When you're buying something also a lot of people who use debit cards debit cards are probably not the best thing he was online it's better to have like a separate.
Small balance credit card maybe a couple of thousand dollars on -- use that for your online purchases are -- more protection much more protection generally speaking from fraud and other things.
And if somebody is all your debit card number by mistake or something like this happens you credit card or your your checking -- and -- cleared out.
So easily.
All right well Eric thanks for coming outside and -- --
