If you’re a non-Japanese living in Japan and you fly home every once in a while, you may be getting screwed, according to this article. It seems that foreigners in Japan are getting charged more for airline tickets than Japanese are–perhaps significantly more. The same ticket that costs you ¥70,000 ($608) might be sold to a Japanese customer for just ¥57,000 ($495), a difference of 20%. This is done by selling the tickets via different agencies run by the same company.

In this case, the culprit is No. 1 Travel (the ones with incredibly stupid and annoying animated ads on CNN-J) and its sister agency, HIS Travel. No. 1 sells to foreign customers; HIS sells to Japanese.

A couple consisting of a Japanese woman and an Canadian man found this out when the woman called HIS and asked for a round-trip ticket to Los Angeles. She did not say who they were for (they were for her Canadian boyfriend), and the agency assumed it was for her. They gave her the ¥57,000 price. Later, when the agency found out who the ticket was for, they upped the price to ¥70,000.

So how could the agency justify this, when it is against the law in Japan to discriminate in pricing according to nationality or race? The HIS representative explained it like this:

According to Kinokuni, foreigners buy return tickets because they are cheaper than one-way tickets. They then return to their countries and don’t use the return portion.

“In this case the airline may charge us the full fare which means low profits or a loss.

“So in order to avoid the risk we restricted the tickets to Japanese only customers, who will definitely return to Japan.”

This explanation is, of course, utter BS. First of all, something is seriously fishy if if the airline sells a round-trip ticket for less than a one-way. Even if they can’t fill the return seat, there is no logical reason to charge more than the round trip ticket. Second, if someone buys a round-trip ticket, they cannot be forced to use both ways, and charging the agency for the passenger’s failure to do so is ludicrous; if it is not illegal, it should be made so.

Third, there is no reason why Japanese would not do the exact same thing; if a Japanese goes to live in the U.S. for longer than an open return ticket would allow for, there is nothing stopping them from pulling the same trick, and they likely do just that. Fourth, you cannot charge foreigners more based on a likelihood; not only are you discriminating by nationality and race, you’re also charging the majority of travelers for the transgressions of a minority.

Moreover, the price differential makes it fairly clear that they are charging every foreign passenger the full difference in price, when clearly most passengers (probably the vast majority) don’t pull out of the return. In short, the reason is bogus or it is being used to commit fraud.

Here’s what I’m going to do when I buy my next ticket: I will get a quote from No. 1–which I usually use–and ask a Japanese friend to get the identical flight pricing from HIS. If they differ, I am going to raise holy hell with them. Unfortunately, I will not have the option of telling them that I’m going elsewhere–I mean, I could, but in the past, all agencies that sell to foreigners sell at the same price. It’s not like this one agency does it and no one else does.

That does not mean that you can’t threaten them and give them hell for it.

I advise everyone else to do the same, unless you enjoy being overcharged by 20%.