Letter: Squaw should honor $1 pass

To the community,

Not sure if you’re already aware of this, but (Oct. 1) Squaw Valley Resort had a glitch in their online season pass system that allowed ~500+ patrons to purchase gold level season passes for $1. Normally, this pass costs $809, however it was significantly discounted to a low, low price of a single dollar.

Like any other incredible opportunity that comes my way, I purchased two gold passes for a total of $2. It’s been brought to my attention that Squaw will likely not honor the advertised price and is in the process of refunding the 500+ passes purchased. However there seems to be some conflicting issues that has arisen that I feel needs to be brought into the light of the media/news:

1. A few people have already successfully received their gold passes and confirmed they only paid $1. They went to the pass office (Oct. 1), took their photo, and received their passes — with no hassle or questions asked.

2. One person has received a rejection email stating that Squaw will immediately reject and refund the $1 pass purchase for their order, however no one else who purchased their tickets (that day) has received this email. Since no one else has been notified, the rest of the consumers, like myself — who purchased these passes are under false pretenses that they have in fact, a real season pass.

3. If they honored the pass price for the select few people who received their season passes yesterday — isn’t there some sort of consumer protection law that justifies Squaw to honor all season passes that were purchased for $1?

My concern is that Squaw will quickly brush their mistake under the rug with little to no negative impact on their brand loyalty from other customers – simply because no one is aware of this situation.

Although I might have spent only $1 on this pass, if Squaw honored it — I would likely spend close to $500 throughout the season on food, merchandise, cocktails, etc. I don’t believe that granting the ~500+ passes will significantly impact their bottom line revenue considering most of these folks will spend money when they’re at the resort since they can justify their spending with, “I only paid $1 for this pass.”

I’ve never snowboarded at Squaw nor visited it simply because it was always out of my budget to get a season pass. I purchased this $1 pass because it was a phenomenal deal and I intend to visit Squaw often this season. I live in Incline Village and have many friends that come up to visit during the winter specifically to snowboard and ski. Normally we go to Northstar, however with this Squaw pass I have incentive to take my friends to Squaw instead. My friends of course would have to purchase a daily pass for themselves, and rental gear, and food, and drinks – so if Squaw just honored my $1 pass – they would still make money off this error since I’m bringing in new revenue from customers who usually go elsewhere to snowboard.

This isn’t the first time a glitch in the system has occurred for a major company. Take for instance United Airlines back in 2013, they had a system glitch for two hours where flight prices were advertised and purchased at $0! With the help of the news/media outlets bringing this mistake to light and potentially damaging their brand, United inevitably honored those prices and acknowledged that they made an error on their part, but to keep customer satisfaction high and to keep their brand in tact — they granted those folks who purchased flights at the advertised $0 price.

Please help us to demand Squaw to do what is right, and honor the $1 season passes before it is too late and they simply decline all of our passes today!

Sincerely,

Jessica Perez, Incline Village