These companies have had so many fristrating policies for years — and this one is what you’re worried about?

HN has a policy of not posting AI generated slop on here. Why aren’t you lamenting how they should just let you be “you”?

> These companies have had so many fristrating policies for years — and this one is what you’re worried about?

Yes? Fuck that guy for wanting a company to abide by public policy; really?

I mean, this isn't an either/or situation; companies should follow the law. If they don't, they should be brought into compliance by the masses and the government.

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As an aside, companies should want me to do business with them and they should make it as easy as fucking possible for me to spend my money. That includes potentially allowing me to use an agent to do so.

I disagree. Companies shouldn’t have to make it as easy as possible for you to pay them. Both sides of a deal may have their own standards.

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They won’t care if you use an agent to spend money.

They do care if you “abuse” the return/support features.

Walmart accepts returns basically without question; if 89% of their orders were agents and eventually returned they’d change something.

Well we have seen some return/repair policies be abused and then degraded but I’m not sure this is the best example because typically it’s going to be a physical purchase, shipping costs, things like that whereas the airline example is a purely digital transaction in terms of where the AI comes in to play.

Overall though I think the “abuse” is a good thing as it eliminates pricing arbitrage that the airline is doing and forces them to change their business model and compete somewhere else or in a different manner. We shouldn’t enshrine business models without an extremely good reason.

I would say Uniter Airlines disallowing AI agents is because they want to follow the law

A common piece of advice for businesses is to fire your problematic customers. After a point they are just costing more than they are worth.

There's a difference between abusing a free API of a service to harass people vs "shut up and take my money".

Uh have you ever flown in the USA? I think “ antagonistic to their customer by default” is part of their corporate DNA.

No change fees and full future flight credits or refunded miles for cancellations after 24 hours is customer-antagonistic?

In every state you can pay the full retail price for a refundable ticket.

I don't know if something has changed recently, but I canceled a United booking once within that 24 hour period. I don't remember it being particularly difficult. I did it on the website.

Delta has had this forever, in every state. And it's very easy.

I have never had a problem canceling a flight within 24 hours, and I do not live in California nor do I fly there often. No idea if this is a law or just what airlines do.

A lot of times, companies will just adhere to the strictest applicable version of the legislation because these laws have a tendency to spread, and because it's easier to just have one system than to have an extra set of rules just for e.g. Californians.

It is not hard to cancel United bookings within 24 hours. Even after 24 hours their change and cancel policies are really reasonable. With the exception of basic economy you get a future flight credit and there are no change fees for modified flights.

People using AI agents to book travel are just lazy as hell.

Imagine being so lazy that you use a washing machine instead of washing your clothes by hand. People today's are lazy as hell.

I mean let’s be real, a washing machine is far more consistent and reliable.

I'll bet they don't even go to the well to get their water and instead they just go to the faucet in their house!

Having done laundry by hand, it is a much easier task than moving water is.

I mean, that’s arguably true.

AI is the technology that is going to fast forward our society into Wall-E.

We'll yea but that could be said about any technology. Washing dishes is even less menial task than buying flight tickets because it isn't designed to be annoying.

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Oh great so we found another middle class profession to put out of work (travel agents).

Instead we’ll end up with AI agents that don’t actually find the most optimal anything because anyone who blocks bots and/or doesn’t get paid by AI providers for data access won’t be in the “database.”

The when something goes wrong we are all alone, we’re sending our bot to talk to another bot.

Doorman fallacy strikes again.

Let's be really real, travel agents have been a declining business for a long time and that has nothing to do with AI.

The two niches of travel agents that have a future are full service event coordination (group bookings, charter, etc., combined with ground transportation), and complex RTW type bookings ("We're going to fly to Germany, stay two nights, take a train to X, stay a night, fly domestically across Italy, then hop on a river cruise, and fly home from Croatia").

For simpler things, there's just no need and many are their own worst enemy.

I took my family to Maui for 11 nights, spending most of that in a resort, then a night in Hana before heading back and home.

The two agents we spoke to that specialized in Maui vacations quoted us a price through them that was $4,000 more than the hotel wanted for the same room direct, and $7,000 more than through Priceline. Both presented itineraries that were in fairly direct contradiction with some requests we made ("we'd like to do x, y, and z, but each with at least a day between them" - one wanted to book them on three consecutive days "so then you could relax"), etc. And both got fairly pissy when we said didn't feel they were giving us something aligned with what we wanted, nor communicating any reason for doing so. "Good luck booking with Priceline, the hotel is going to give you the worst room they can". While I know that there's maybe some stigma with that, ended up being the opposite, "And you're staying with us for ... oh, eleven nights, lets make sure it's the best room we can give you".

You found two bad travel agents, I’ve found more than two bad/hallucinated outputs from LLMs.

I think that the AI travel industry will basically end up not giving you the best options compared to manual simply because steering you one direction or another is so valuable. I.e., AI will sell “sponsored listings” and your AI will book you at those places because you don’t care.

Or the travel providers who don’t want to pay AI firms money will not be booking options, like how Southwest Airlines wasn’t in Google for so long.

The nice part about travel agents is how they’re humans so they have brains and can work around any situation like that. That’s also why booking manually can beat AI.

If you’re traveling to have leisure or exploration, having a prediction engine choose the same probabilistic winner each time is going to end up being a negative aspect. You’ll say “I want a great trip to NYC” and you’ll end up going to Times Square like everyone else because the AI knows that most people go there.

I have zero comments about the usefulness of AI travel agents. Indeed I tend to agree.

And of course, yes, there are good travel agents and as I described circumstances where they are a useful resource.

But in a world of aggregators and other things, many travel agents are just middle men.

Blaming AI for “destroying another middle class profession” ignores years of decline bringing us here. Might it be the final nail in the coffin? Maybe. But AI can’t really wear the guilt on the demise.

> Doorman fallacy strikes again.

In am not getting why this would be the name of such claim

maybe I am not elite and rich or infirm enough - but I do not get why I would pay extra for doorman or similar servants.

Just Google “doorman fallacy”

Where I live, there were no doormans in the first place. It is one of those weird examples that flies on HN and nowhere else.

It's not that weird. Some 30% of humanity lives somewhere that could use a doorman. Your lived experience bubble isn't representative of humanity as a whole.

I know what "doorman fallacy" is, just that I think that doorman itself are a terrible example.

It's actually a very good fallacy to learn about.

I know what "doorman fallacy" is, just that I think that doorman itself are a terrible example.

Travel agents have been shrinking for 25 years thanks to online booking, and from a support point of view chat it’s have been a scourge for decades. People vote with their wallet.

Or, perhaps we have far different priorities in life than you do. I’ll take all the help I can get from AI to optimize where my time is spent.

What a terrible take.

You’re right, some people prioritize optimizing their life away. I prefer to live it.

Just remember that LLMs as a technology are a prediction engine. If you don’t give it very specific inputs, it will just coalesce to a probabilistic outcome.

Soon your travel plans will be just another purple gradient website: https://prg.sh/ramblings/Why-Your-AI-Keeps-Building-the-Same...

You sound like the guy that called the cops when the Target employee wouldn't sell him an electric toothbrush for 1¢.

That’s a federal law.

> In California, you have 24 hours to cancel

Thats a DoT requirement all flights to, from or within the US.

Cancelling a United flight is one of the easiest cancellations I've dealt with, their app is one of the best but its just as simple from the website

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> of the biggest problems is people booking through 3rd party websites/cheap-online-travel websites

Sure but United (or whoever) chooses to sell them tickets and create those experiences.

Delta has a product called Delta Vacations, run by Expedia. All of these things are businesses decisions they decide to embark on with 3rd parties. They promote the integrations. They don’t have to do these things. I don’t mind if they do, of course, but I have 0 sympathy for them if someone has a bad experience on a 3rd party site selling their product.

If I buy something from Amazon it’s no different.

> If I buy something from Amazon it’s no different.

Exactly, if you buy a pair of Nike's from Amazon you don't go to the Nike website to try and get a refund and then say Nike tricked you out of your refund. The problem is for a lot of people flying is so infrequent and usually a major source of stress that they overlook this fact and it's the airline -- not the cheap prices company they entered into business with -- gets the blame.

I think you misunderstood the point there. Mechanically that’s how Amazon returns work but if you buy a faulty product and it has a 1+ year warranty and it breaks or doesn’t work as intended and now you are outside the return window you would probably return it to the manufacturer.

If Amazon started to ship Nikes with rips or something in them you’d think poorly of Nike first, because you’d assume they sent Amazon a faulty product.

> If Amazon started to ship Nikes with rips or something in them you’d think poorly of Nike first, because you’d assume they sent Amazon a faulty product.

No, I'd think the 3rd party I bought from through Amazon is shady. This literally just happened to my mother in law. We know the quality of the shoes and have seen them first hand. It never crossed either of our minds that the brand was shipping defective product through amazon.

Amazon allowed that third party seller on their website.

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I've canceled United bookings in the 24h window many times. In all but one case it was as easy as clicking a button. The other case I had to call them, I think because it was around 23h after booking and there was some broken timezone math behind the button.

Why would there be any timezone math behind the button? 24 hours is 24 hours regardless of whether you move during that period.

I always laugh when I see it presented to me like it's a feature these airlines offer. FREE 24 HOUR CANCELLATION! I appreciate you informing me of your federal mandate by law in bold, feature-like text.

They don't even mind it really because they overbook.

it's a single button with instant cancellation after typing in your name and pnr so what are you talking about

Disagree. An agent could theoretically continually book, then cancel a flight to hold a seat as a means of price watching.

However United can (and will) ban problematic customers. This policy just gives them something to point to as to why the customer was banned.

Don't you need to provide traveller information at booking? Tickets are tied to names nowadays.

Make anything up to hold (repeatedly if necessary), cancel, then finally rebook under the actual name and passport #. As long as they can't or don't fingerprint you well enough to stitch those identities back together (so would require a few distinct email addresses at the very least).

The customer yes, not the customer's crappy bot.

You have probably mixed up United with another airline, as many commenters (including myself) have experienced the exact opposite--United's cancellation process is one of the easiest (within the first 24 hours) and is still fairly simple after the 24 hour window.

United’s pretty easy. I’ve canceled many flights and received many vouchers or refunds. Honestly, United is quite good. App is top class. I like flying United out of SFO since it’s a pretty good experience.

except if you're carrying a guitar, that is.