Quote:
Originally Posted by PHXFlyer
|
I have already dealt with those conditions of carriage printed on tickets. They provide no defence to the airline.
Words printed on a ticket given to a customer after the purchase do not bind the customer. This is clearly established law. You can ask your granddaddy if you like PHX.
A contract is made when people agree. In some situations they both sign a printed contract. Now the passenger does not sign the ticket. If I go to an airline ticket counter, I ask the price of a flight, and the agent quotes it. If I accept, I pay. The contract is concluded here. The ticket is handed to me after. It is only if its terms were brought to my attention
before I paid and I agreed to them, then i could have been said to be bound by them.
This applies to many kinds of contracts where the merchant tries to rely on printed conditions on tickets issued after payment. I have already referred in another thread to the case of
Lisi v Alitalia.
The principle has been applied In England where a hotel guest lost valuables from his room and the hotel sought to rely on a notice at the back of his door saying the hotel was not liable for losses from the room. The Court found that when the guest signed the hotel register, he had obligated himself to pay for the room and the contract was entered into then. What the hotel should do is to post a notice at the reception area saying that safety deposit boxes are availalble and that the hotel was not liable for loss of valuables from the room
Again it was applied by the House of Lords, the highest court in England where a vehicle was damaged in a ferry crossing. The ferry owners relied on writing at the back of the ticket given to the driver when he paid, and just before he drove on to the ferry. Again the Court found that the ferry owner could not rely on writing on the ticket which said that the ferry owners were not liable for damage to vehicles while on the ferry. In this case the court said the writing in a catalog is not sufficient notice to the passenger. Writing on a website likewise will be like writing in a catalog in the old days.
I would like to hear someone say, "I asked my granddaddy who is a lawyer and he said that there is no such principle of law." All lawyers know of it.
Why do airlines continue to use these printed conditions on tickets? One poster, Airhead, has been telling us over and over the past few days that the airline he worked for lied outright to him about what was the law. We are not listening. Airlines have no problem in fooling customers. Those words are there to fool passengers. When the passenger complains, the agent says, look at your ticket. The passenger says, "Oops I really didn't read it. Its my fault"
Airlines know full well that those conditions of carriage printed on tickets are not valid unless they have been accepted and agreed to by the passenger.