California requires all sellers of travel to register with the Attorney General's Office and to disp

Sometimes queen charlotte islands tours an advertised "sale" price isn't as much of a deal as it's made out to be. Other times, the price you are offered turns out to be such a good deal that the seller doesn't want to honor it . This week, I have reports on recent examples of both sides of this "too good to be true" coin.
You might think that the "Groupon" name implies that customers are getting a discount in exchange for a group purchase, but this was anything but a "group" queen charlotte islands tours deal: Two coach/economy-class vouchers (each good for a pair of tickets) were offered for US$10,000 per voucher, and one business-class voucher for US$20,000.
All three of the vouchers Groupon offered were sold, including a coach-class voucher bought queen charlotte islands tours by Melissa and Trevor , a couple in Santa Fe planning to use them for their honeymoon trip around the world later this year.
The RTW tickets included in the Groupon package have a peculiar set of rules that don't correspond exactly to the rules of any published RTW fare. But almost all of the itineraries that would fit within the rules of the Groupon deal could be ticketed at a published Skyteam queen charlotte islands tours RTW fare.
The Groupon deal includes only Delta, Air France, KLM, Alitalia, and a few of their minor affiliates and subsidiaries. Skyteam and its published RTW fares include a much larger selection of airlines including Aeroflot, Aeromexico, China Airlines (Taiwan ROC ), China Eastern (PRC), China Southern (PRC), Kenya Airways, Korean Air, and Vietnam Airlines. And the Groupon deal, unlike any of the Skytem RTW fares for travel originating queen charlotte islands tours in the USA, allows for travel only within the Northern Hemisphere. queen charlotte islands tours So the Groupon queen charlotte islands tours deal allows only a very small subset of the itineraries that could be ticketed at a published Skyteam RTW fare.
The Groupon deal is limited to a maximum of 10 stops and 16 flight or surface segments (surface transportation not included in the fare but included in the segment count), but has no mileage limit. Skyteam published RTW fares have mileage limits which vary depending on the price. There are three or four Skyteam RTW fares in each class (coach or business), with progressively higher prices and mileage queen charlotte islands tours limits.
The least expensive coach-class Skyteam published RTW fare for sale and travel originating in the USA is the YRTWSKY3 fare basis, with a price of US$4,569 plus tax and a maximum of 29,000 miles. The most expensive is the YRTWSKY1, queen charlotte islands tours US$6,011 plus tax for up to 39,000 miles.
It's possible that you could find an itinerary queen charlotte islands tours using only the airlines allowed queen charlotte islands tours by the Groupon that would exceed the YRTWSKY1 mileage limit (39,000 miles) without requiring more than 16 segments or dipping into the Southern Hemisphere, but it would probably include impermissible backtracking, such as going back to one of the participating Groupon airlines' hubs in Europe to get between queen charlotte islands tours India and China -- something that could be done with fewer miles, queen charlotte islands tours without backtracking, with the additional airlines allowed by a published Skyteam RTW fare.
Even with that sort of backtracking, a 10-stop route (the maximum allowed by the Groupon deal) using all of the allowable airlines would probably still come in well within the mileage limit for an RTWSKY1 fare. For example, San Francisco - Minneapolis/St. Paul - Atlanta - Amsterdam - Moscow - Rome - New Delhi - Paris - Shanghai- Tokyo - Honolulu - San Francisco is only a little over 30,000 miles. That would qualify it for the YRTWSKY2 fare, $5,187 plus tax for up to 34,000 miles. But for comparison purposes, I'll assume that the Groupon purchasers managed to find a route flown by the Groupon airlines and qualifying for the Groupon rules would require the highest-mileage (39K) RTWSKY1 fare.
As for the rest of the items in the Groupon package, I'll take their word, for the sake of argument, on the value of each of the three US$500 excursions. A published-fare Skyteam RTW ticket would include one piece of checked queen charlotte islands tours luggage, and Alitalia, Air France, and KLM all provide food and drink (yes, including alcohol) at no extra charge, even in the back of the plane. You can get a steamer trunk for $50 or less at a garage sale, on Craigslist , or on eBay . That leaves only the pair of hats and whatever Delta charges on their domestic flights queen charlotte islands tours for as much as you can eat and drink. $500 is a generous overestimate of the total value of all of these incidentals.
When I asked, Groupon attributed the value figure to Delta. According to Groupon's p.r. firm, "The tickets were offered at approximately 50% off what Delta quoted for a 10 stop ticket in N. America, Europe and Asia. Depending on how many stops each buyer makes (min of 3 and max of 10) and to what countries they travel, the price would vary based on variable fuel surcharges and taxes for different cities and distances flown but the economy pairs were essentially $10K for ~$20K worth of tickets and the biz class were essentially $20K for ~$45K worth of tickets."
(This US$45,000 "value" figure for the $20,000 business-class Groupon doesn't appear in any of the Groupon ads I can find, but it's even more inflated than the coach-class "value". The CRTWSKY1 Skyteam published business-class RTW fare, with the same rules as the YRTWSKY1 queen charlotte islands tours coach fare, is US$11,558 queen charlotte islands tours per person. That gives a total value for the business-class Groupon for 2 people of about $26,000, and a discount of about 23%.)
When I pressed for what specific queen charlotte islands tours itinerary or fare formed the basis for Groupon's value estimate, their outside publicist referred my question to Groupon's inside p.r. team, who had this to say about their methodology and sources of information:
In general, the offer value that we place on a deal may be based on a survey of other sellers, a particular seller's current or former price, or it may be a value suggested by the seller. queen charlotte islands tours With respect to the Jet Set (Epic Deal), we used a retail value of the airline tickets suggested by Delta Airlines based on their knowledge of their ticket prices and their industry.
Next I asked Delta: "(1) What value figure did Delta provide to Groupon? queen charlotte islands tours (2) What itinerary was it based on? (3) What was the basis for your value figure? queen charlotte islands tours (e.g. pricing of a specific queen charlotte islands tours itinerary? Published RTW fare applicable to the rules of the offer?)"
Delta referred my query to a London-based p.r. staffer -- odd since I'm based in San Francisco, Groupon is based in Chicago, Delta is based in Atlanta, and the person within Delta to whom I was referred claimed to have been unaware of the Groupon offer.
A series of reports from Delta's spokesperson on a quest for answers ("I will try and get some more background queen charlotte islands tours for you. I have emailed some colleagues to get some more background on this offer.... I have been trying to identify queen charlotte islands tours who put this together. queen charlotte islands tours I've ascertained it is not SkyTeam as I've liaised with that group and they are not involved. Looks more like a joint venture deal but trying to ascertain this and liaising with the European partners.... Definitely puzzling ... It's like a case of CSI -Groupon. I am keen to get to the bottom of this too and have various lines of investigation going... I am responsible for SkyTeam and Alliance activity and so I am therefore your correct point of contact. I can confirm I am working on getting you responses....") ended abruptly with this curt message:
As I've mentioned before, and as state Attorneys General have complained of (with rare bipartisan near-unanimity) to Congress and the Department queen charlotte islands tours of Transportation , Federal "preemption" gives airlines and their ticket queen charlotte islands tours sales agents immunity from state and local truth-in-advertising laws.
That leaves the U.S. Department of Transportation as the sole policeman of airline ticket price advertising in the USA. Federal law and DOT regulations prohibit "false and deceptive" advertising practices. According to a letter to the airlines that the DOT pointed out when I asked about the Groupon ad:
Advertisements sometimes promote queen charlotte islands tours air fares in terms of a percentage savings (e.g. "Save up to 50%"). However, many such ads make it impossible to determine what the advertised fare is being compared to and how the percentage savings are calculated.
Consumers are entitled to real savings to match what the promotions promise. It is thus the Department's position that "percentage off" ads are deceptive unless (1) the "benchmark" fare (the fare to which the advertised fare is being compared) was offered for sale in reasonable quantities for a reasonable period immediately prior to the ad for the new fare, and (2) either the ad clearly identifies and describes the "benchmark" fare, or the "benchmark" fare is a discount fare comparable to the advertised fare, with similar restrictions.
There is no "benchmark" fare with similar restrictions to those of the tickets included in the Groupon package. None was identified in the Groupon ad, and when pressed, neither Groupon queen charlotte islands tours nor Delta could identify one. All Groupon would say is that the advertised "value" queen charlotte islands tours of the tickets queen charlotte islands tours was "suggested by Delta Airlines based on their knowledge of their ticket prices and their industry."
So if it looks like a good deal to the DOT, the Department won't bother to investigate, not even to even read the ad to see if it identifies the "benchmark" it's using as the basis for its value or discount claims, or compare the advertised prices to the prices in the airlines' queen charlotte islands tours tariffs.
If questioned queen charlotte islands tours by the DOT, Groupon might try to claim that it isn't a "ticket sales agent" subject to the Federal queen charlotte islands tours rules. I don't think that's legally correct -- but even if it is, that would only get Groupon out of the Federal frying pan and into the California state fire.
States can't control queen charlotte islands tours interstate common carriers (or their agents) -- that's what's been preempted by the DOT -- but they have authority over all other sellers of travel. According to a fairly accurate summary from California's Attorney General:
queen charlotte islands tours California requires all sellers of travel to register with the Attorney General's Office and to display the registration number on all advertising. While not assuring queen charlotte islands tours