WWTBAM Bored

I've been spending a lot of time in Casper, WY the past 4 weeks. Today I go to check in for my flight back to Houston, via Denver, and the kiosk informs me the flight is oversold and asks would I be willing to give up my seat for $500. It is against company policy to accept such agreements when traveling on company business where they are paying the airfare. So I declined.

When I checked my bag the agent said "the flight is oversold, would you be willing to give up your seat on this flight and be put on the next flight to Denver for $700? We'll get you to Houston at 11:30 (instead of 6:00) and put you in first class on the Denver to Houston leg."

Hmmm..... I informed her that is was against my company's policy to do so, "..but let me call my boss." My boss said, "sure, why not?" so I accepted. About 20 minutes later I hear them offering $800 and I'm thinking "Crap, I folded too soon.". But just now the United employee tracked me down (not hard to do in this airport, I think its just me and a couple of other passengers right now) and swapped my $700 voucher out for an $800 one.

So I got and $800 voucher, $14 worth of food vouchers, and a refund on my $25 baggage fee. The company will benefit from the $25 refund, and the food voucher as I don't need reimbursement for lunch. Or dinner since I'll be in first class out of Denver.

I'll miss Friday night with the family, but for $800 my wife and I can go somewhere for a long weekend later this year.

And the Casper airport has free wi-fi!

BackInTex wrote:
I'll miss Friday night with the family, but for $800 my wife and I can go somewhere for a long weekend later this year.

And the Casper airport has free wi-fi!

For $800, you can buy the city of Casper.

Say hello to Sheriff Longmire.

silverscreenselect wrote:

BackInTex wrote:
I'll miss Friday night with the family, but for $800 my wife and I can go somewhere for a long weekend later this year.

And the Casper airport has free wi-fi!

For $800, you can buy the city of Casper.

Say hello to Sheriff Longmire.

You haven't been to Casper lately. High dollar real estate. Because of that bubblin' crude. Oil that is. Texas tea.

Almost got to meet him this morning, but he pulled over the car behind me.

Actually it was the Wyoming Highway Patrol, and I wasn't speeding, but still you get that sinking feeling in your stomach when you pass by a cop with radar and almost immediately they pull out on the road with their lights on.

BackInTex wrote:I've been spending a lot of time in Casper, WY the past 4 weeks. Today I go to check in for my flight back to Houston, via Denver, and the kiosk informs me the flight is oversold and asks would I be willing to give up my seat for $500. It is against company policy to accept such agreements when traveling on company business where they are paying the airfare. So I declined.

When I checked my bag the agent said "the flight is oversold, would you be willing to give up your seat on this flight and be put on the next flight to Denver for $700? We'll get you to Houston at 11:30 (instead of 6:00) and put you in first class on the Denver to Houston leg."

Hmmm..... I informed her that is was against my company's policy to do so, "..but let me call my boss." My boss said, "sure, why not?" so I accepted. About 20 minutes later I hear them offering $800 and I'm thinking "Crap, I folded too soon.". But just now the United employee tracked me down (not hard to do in this airport, I think its just me and a couple of other passengers right now) and swapped my $700 voucher out for an $800 one.

So I got and $800 voucher, $14 worth of food vouchers, and a refund on my $25 baggage fee. The company will benefit from the $25 refund, and the food voucher as I don't need reimbursement for lunch. Or dinner since I'll be in first class out of Denver.

I'll miss Friday night with the family, but for $800 my wife and I can go somewhere for a long weekend later this year.

And the Casper airport has free wi-fi!

Casper is a neat town - way to get a deal, though! I prolly would have accepted, THEN called my boss.

BackInTex wrote:So I got and $800 voucher, $14 worth of food vouchers, and a refund on my $25 baggage fee. The company will benefit from the $25 refund, and the food voucher as I don't need reimbursement for lunch. Or dinner since I'll be in first class out of Denver.

Nice!

I could understand the company policy if you were traveling on their time and might miss work days as a result of the bump. But when you're traveling on your weekend...why should they have any say in the matter?

MarleysGh0st wrote:

BackInTex wrote:So I got and $800 voucher, $14 worth of food vouchers, and a refund on my $25 baggage fee. The company will benefit from the $25 refund, and the food voucher as I don't need reimbursement for lunch. Or dinner since I'll be in first class out of Denver.

Nice!

I could understand the company policy if you were traveling on their time and might miss work days as a result of the bump. But when you're traveling on your weekend...why should they have any say in the matter?

It creates a moral hazard. Employees would be tempted to try to plan company travel for flights from which they are likely to be bumped. --Bob

MarleysGh0st wrote:

BackInTex wrote:So I got and $800 voucher, $14 worth of food vouchers, and a refund on my $25 baggage fee. The company will benefit from the $25 refund, and the food voucher as I don't need reimbursement for lunch. Or dinner since I'll be in first class out of Denver.

Nice!

I could understand the company policy if you were traveling on their time and might miss work days as a result of the bump. But when you're traveling on your weekend...why should they have any say in the matter?

I think, but don't know, that the purpose of the policy is to prevent folks from scheduling flights around frequently overbooked flights rather than focusing on what is the best flight for business purposes. And to prevent people from doing it when it will impact their arrival for business purposes. I can see that happening. Its just easier to have the policy prohibit it in all instances rather than trying to slice and dice all the possible scenarios where it would be unacceptable or acceptable.

In this case you're spot on. The company is not out any of my work time so they shouldn't care.

Bob78164 wrote:

MarleysGh0st wrote:

BackInTex wrote:So I got and $800 voucher, $14 worth of food vouchers, and a refund on my $25 baggage fee. The company will benefit from the $25 refund, and the food voucher as I don't need reimbursement for lunch. Or dinner since I'll be in first class out of Denver.

Nice!

I could understand the company policy if you were traveling on their time and might miss work days as a result of the bump. But when you're traveling on your weekend...why should they have any say in the matter?

It creates a moral hazard. Employees would be tempted to try to plan company travel for flights from which they are likely to be bumped. --Bob

Might create a tax issue, although for $800 I don't think that's a major problem.

Recall, if you will, what happened with NBA referees about 15 years ago or so. The union rules stated that the league would fly them in first class. Many refs routinely would downgrade on their own, and pocket the difference. Eventually IRS got wind of it, and most of them were charged with tax evasion for not reporting the extra income (since they didn't buy the ticket, the NBA did -- and in an 84 game season, that's a lot of flying). And many of those refs lost their jobs over this.

I suspect the company policy was put in place to minimize this, or at least to cover the company in case an employee did that.

EDIT: Did some quick checking on a story related to this case:

The practice of exchanging first-class tickets for less-expensive tickets was permitted under the referees' collective-bargaining agreement with the NBA, but the league was required to report to the Internal Revenue Service whether any income was derived from the exchange. The NBA relied on information from the referees in reporting to the IRS.

FWIW, in this case, the underreported income was $82,000. Not sure how long a period that represented.

This is interesting. Is everyone receiving an airline travel voucher in excess of the amount they paid required to report it to the IRS? I'd assume so, but never thought about it before. I've gotten a few vouchers in my day, but never cash.

ghostjmf wrote:This is interesting. Is everyone receiving an airline travel voucher in excess of the amount they paid required to report it to the IRS? I'd assume so, but never thought about it before. I've gotten a few vouchers in my day, but never cash.

If the airline sends you a 1099-MISC you'd better report it. Otherwise if you really like paying taxes report it.

When we would go to Vegas a couple times a year, we would get to the airport about two and a half hours early and head straight to the gate. We find out if the flight was oversold and if it was, we would get on the list to be bumped. I paid $99 each way one time for the three of us to go. We got the bump and put $310 each in our pockets. We were $110 up on the trip and we were still at the airport. We used those vouchers later in the year for five of us to make another trip. It only took about $100 to make up the difference on all the tickets. I think over the years, We've put about $3,500 in vouchers in our pockets that have been put to really good use.

Ray

Bob Juch wrote:

ghostjmf wrote:This is interesting. Is everyone receiving an airline travel voucher in excess of the amount they paid required to report it to the IRS? I'd assume so, but never thought about it before. I've gotten a few vouchers in my day, but never cash.

If the airline sends you a 1099-MISC you'd better report it. Otherwise if you really like paying taxes report it.

What he said.

Technically, it's income (especially if someone else paid for the ticket). In the NBA ref situation, it was about 10 refs that ended up being chased for not reporting the income, each in the $50k to $90 income range (so you can guess the tax bill, plus penalties and interest). Likely one of them got flagged, and once folks at IRS (or maybe the NBA front office) got looking into it, it took a life of it's on.

For us regular joes, a once or twice a year occurrence (barring the 1099, of course) isn't worth the hassle of IRS, and it's not something easily found via computers -- for now.

I still bet that BackInTex's company's policy is a CYA one. Otherwise, there's some employee that'd try to game the system to make more than a few bucks, and this way the company is off the hook.

If it's your own money, I don't see how there's any income involved in the transaction.

It's like if you went to Dunkin' Donuts and paid for a jelly donut, then the clerk says, "Oh I'm sorry, we just sold the last jelly donut. If you're willing to take a chocolate donut instead, I'll throw in a free muffin. Or I can just give you your money back, if you prefer." I would not consider the muffin to be additional income.

In any case, I've never been offered an $800 travel voucher, but I would take it if at all possible. Many years ago, Delta offered me a free round trip voucher for getting bumped on a flight from Atlanta to Raleigh, which caused about a 90 minute later arrival. I later used the voucher to fly to Alaska, which was my 50th state to visit.

If I had known you were there, I would have sent you over to my in-laws' house for Dinner.

TheCalvinator24 wrote:If I had known you were there, I would have sent you over to my in-laws' house for Dinner.

They live in Casper? I'm headed back today, though I will be really busy Monday and Tuesday, then I am driving down to Greely for the rest of the week (if the weather doesn't prevent me).

Capser seems like a nice town, but they need a few more, no a lot more, trees to make it appealing to me.

BackInTex wrote:Hmmm..... I informed her that is was against my company's policy to do so, "..but let me call my boss." My boss said, "sure, why not?" so I accepted. About 20 minutes later I hear them offering $800 and I'm thinking "Crap, I folded too soon.". But just now the United employee tracked me down (not hard to do in this airport, I think its just me and a couple of other passengers right now) and swapped my $700 voucher out for an $800 one.

I'm pretty sure it's either universally standard policy, or required, that they do this.

BackInTex wrote:

TheCalvinator24 wrote:If I had known you were there, I would have sent you over to my in-laws' house for Dinner.

They live in Casper? I'm headed back today, though I will be really busy Monday and Tuesday, then I am driving down to Greely for the rest of the week (if the weather doesn't prevent me).

Capser seems like a nice town, but they need a few more, no a lot more, trees to make it appealing to me.

They keep planting trees but they blow away.

BackInTex wrote:

TheCalvinator24 wrote:If I had known you were there, I would have sent you over to my in-laws' house for Dinner.

They live in Casper? I'm headed back today, though I will be really busy Monday and Tuesday, then I am driving down to Greely for the rest of the week (if the weather doesn't prevent me).

Capser seems like a nice town, but they need a few more, no a lot more, trees to make it appealing to me.

Yep. About 3 blocks from the mall.