On May 25, the Colombian low-cost airline announced the offer. User complaints about the crash of the page to buy tickets generated great discomfort, so many felt cheated. The complaint was formally filed by Avianca.
The complaint filed by Avianca prompted the Transportation Superintendence to open an investigation to determine the alleged misleading advertising made by the low-cost airline Photo: Ultra Air
The Transportation Superintendence formulated charges against Ultra Air for alleged misleading advertising and violation of consumer rights, for which an administrative investigation will be initiated, following the complaint filed with Avianca, which indicated that the prices of the journeys were not really 10 thousand pesos.
Ultra Air’s commercial vice president, Juan Diego Zapata, stated that in principle they had 10,000 seats available for this promotion, but the success of the campaign led to an increase in quotas,
“At 10:00 pm there were more than 33,000 users trying to access the website at the same time, which caused it to crash. We only managed to serve 36 shoppers during the first three minutes. Once the website was restored, we decided to extend the validity of the promotion from 11:00 p.m. on May 25 to 3:00 a.m. on May 26. In this period, we managed to serve more than 9,500 buyers”,
said in La República.
But, while for the airline everything was a “success”, for many users it was the opposite, in the publication of Twitter Several people said that the prices did not appear or did not correspond, so they already denounced the misleading advertising. Other users uploaded videos where they recorded the purchase process and the price was not 10 thousand pesos as advertised, some even exceeded $100,000.
“ You will find the airfare in 10 thousand + the value of taxes and other additional, this results in the final price that you are seeing on our website. Applies to all routes on selected dates from May 26, 2022 to April 30, 2023. Subject to availability”,
was the airline’s response to users, later they confirmed that the page was down, so they would find a way to get back online so that people could take advantage of the promotion.
Because of all this Avianca filed the complaint with the Transportation Superintendence, since in the verification that was made to the page they could not enter the website and access the promotion published on Twitter last May 25:
“Similarly, on May 25, 2022, on the same social network, Ultra Air made a “retweet” of a post from the account “Viajes y Discounts (@viajesydesc)” with the message “Fly from $10,000 on @ultraairoficial” , accompanied by the note “Ultra Air tickets from $76,820″, misinforming and misleading consumers. Despite this, the airline published this misleading information. The misleading advertising caused hundreds of users to try to access the promotion, which turned out to be untrue. Other passengers purchased tickets, justifying the higher price in the payment of taxes, as can be seen from the comments made in the publication and which are provided as an annex to show deception and the impact on consumers”,
published the Supertransport in a resolution.
Due to this alleged misleading advertising, the entity is already carrying out another investigation, the last one reviewed is gave why the airline would be announcing destinations to which it is not allowed to fly, violating Law 1480 of the Consumer Statute, for creating false expectations and resolution 1582 of 2012, issued by the Aeronautics Civil, where they set the conditions for the provision of user information. The complaint was also filed by Avianca with the Ministry of Transportation, which delegated it to the Superintendency.
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