How can you abuse "lifetime, unlimited"? I want a plane ride, I book a ticket. I cannot book multiple simultaneous tickets. So abuse can only be defined as "They used it more than we'd anticipated."
That school of thought is very much like the oversubscribed phone lines of yore, which made the phone companies highly intolerant of long modem sessions.
This kind of sentiment is why everything nowadays comes with 20 pages of fine print that nobody can wade through. It's not enough just to expect people to be reasonable — everything must be clearly spelled out in excruciating detail, as people will feel free to do any insane thing that comes to their mind if you do not restrict it explicitly, and they will loudly object if you tell them that what they're doing is not reasonable. I'm not sure it is a much more desirable state of affairs.
(Clarification: I'm specifically addressing the idea that there can be no "abusive" use of a lifetime offer. Obviously the TextDrive customers are not in this category.)
A contract does not provide for what is reasonable. It stipulates the relationship between two parties. if you say unlimited personal use, with no right of resale, then I can fly all day every day without worry. I don't see how flying a lot on an unlimited lifetime ticket can be legitimately called abusive.
If I buy a lifetime, fly anytime ticket, and use it all the time, you don't get to call that abuse. If I use the maximum physical quantity of something, for which I have purchased an unlimited supply, that is not abuse. If I am in breach of contract, then I am in breach of contract, but that's not abuse. Abuse implies that you don;t like what I'm doing but I'm not in breach of contract.
Calling something abuse generally means that I've found a use of the service that you didn't forecast for and despite being contractually acceptable, it means you aren't getting the advantage you thought you would from the contract. Expecting me to not use the service to my full advantage is naive at best.
Yes, that's my point exactly. By claiming the absolute right to force upon the counterparty anything they have not explicitly forbidden by contract, you require them to create absurdly lengthy and unnecessarily expansive agreements that enumerate every possible circumstance and give them almost unlimited leeway in the event of a dispute. And then people complain that EULAs are too long and make unnecessary power grabs.
What part of "a contract stipulates the relationship between two parties" did you not understand?
It goes both ways!
That is exactly what contracts are meant to do, and have always been meant to do. And in order to use them successfully, they don't need to be "absurdly lengthy" or anything. The boilerplate you're referring to generally has nothing to do with "abuse" or "being reasonable", and most of it doesn't even need to be there, because if you'd leave it out, it'd be implied.
What you do have to do, however, is stick to the unique terms that you did write in your contract. And if you cannot, don't put them there, or don't offer the contract.
Simple as that. If you offer people unlimited phonecalls, you should be prepared for them to be on the phone 24/7. If you're not, you really shouldn't be offering them unlimited phonecalls, instead maybe offer them 20,000 minutes per month (that's about half of 24/7).
And if "twenty thousand minutes per month" doesn't sound as snazzy as "unlimited minutes", that's too bad because the reality of the matter is that you apparently cannot afford to actually offer "unlimited minutes".
Take a look at the contract that you've entered into with an airline when you buy a regular ticket. These guys are in the pantheon of crossing every t and dotting every i, going do far as to say if we declare something an act of god, then you get no refund, nor recourse.
IIRC, some people were selling their free companion ticket--you could make pretty decent money flying someone along with you whenever you flew. And that was definitely prohibited in the original agreement.
Selling the companion ticket falls outside of my definition of "reasonable use".
The article I read said they were annoyed that some of these guys would actually use the tickets to, you know, fly places, all the time. As if they had unlimited access.
Did they really expect to sell a $400k item so somebody and for the buyer to fly three times a year?
So what? How far ahead of the flights did make the reservations, and how far ahead did he cancel?
Are we really saying that the handful of wealthy people who bought unlimited tickets are to blame for AA's problems, and not the fact that AA appears to have been bad math?
Order a ticket plus companion ticket to London for every other day of the month. Sell the companion ticket on craigslist for $200 and ferry people you've never met to Europe.
I never read anything that talked about this as part of the problem. It was always "We didn't expect them to use it so much."
That's an awful lot of strangers to make transatlantic flights with at 200 bucks a pop, and it would take quite a long time to recoup the multi-hundred-thousand dollar investment in the companion ticket. Hardly seems worth the time for somebody who can afford half a million for a couple of lifetime passes.
When bond broker Willard May of Round Rock, Texas, was forced into retirement after a run-in with federal securities regulators in the early 1990s, he turned to his trusty AAirpass to generate income. Using his companion ticket, he began shuttling a Dallas couple back and forth to Europe for $2,000 a month.
"For years, that was all the flying I did," said May, 81. "It's how I got the bills paid."
OK. so there was a guy. I still contend that contracts must stipulate the entire business relationship. If the contract did not forbid accepting money to fly people in his companion seat then fire the lawyer. If it did, then he's in breach of contract, and they can cancel, and sue for damages.
If you read the Times article you'll see some pass holders sell tickets, book the same route on different flights (in case they get delayed in traffic) and book two seats in order to have more space. It's not just a case of flying too much.
