View source for Sell What You Don't Have

==Sell Something You Don't Have==

I've got a brilliant business plan. I will buy a case of beer and then sell the single bottles online. I only have 24 bottles in the case, but I reckon I can get at least 50 people to pay for them. Most of them will no longer be thirsty 48 hours later, so they won't complain. And I'll have their money.

If you sell something you don't have, it's called fraud, when an airline does it, it's called standard operating procedure #UnitedAirlines

Airlines have been doing it for years. They deliberately sell more seats than they have on the aircraft. In fact, there are laws that say they can.

How did airlines convince politicians who are always concerned about "optics", to pass a law that was going to make people unhappy and angry?

Because "people buy seats and don't turn up". So that makes it OK for the airline to guess how many people might possibly do that and sell their seat to someone else anyway?

<blockquote>My neighbour has a lawn mower. For 6 days a week he doesn't use it. So I pop over his house take his lawn mower and mow my grass with it. One day he took the day off and wanted to mow his grass, but found his lawn mower gone. He saw me happily cutting my grass with his mower. He walked over and asked me to give it back. I offered him the loose change in my pocket to go away. At this point he got angry, but I'm bigger and tougher than him so that was never going to work for him.</blockquote>

Hmm... that story outrages us, but it's OK if a million dollar corporation bullies people?

The airlines have had it too good, too long.

It needs to stop.

[[Business Analysis]] | [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39563570 BBC Coverage of United Airlines incident] | [https://mobile.united.com United Airlines]