Eurail deal a fast one?

Hoping to buy $442 rail passes for $125 during an online promotion, Henry Sands said he and his wife, Kaaran, spent 15 hours researching train schedules, hotels and more for their upcoming trip to Europe.

“I was ready to go,” said Sands, who lives in Los Angeles.

But the Rail Europe website, www.raileurope.com, never offered him a chance to get the deal, he said. All it displayed, Sands said, was a “Coming Soon” notice and then, minutes after the sale was to have started, a second notice saying the passes were sold out.

“I feel duped,” Sands said.

It isn’t clear whether Sands and dozens of others who posted complaints about the promotion in online chat rooms last month were misled. That’s one problem with fast-moving Internet sales, where travel deals appear and disappear like Ferraris darting on and off a freeway.

Rail Europe Inc., which is based in New York, said the discount offer for a three-country Eurail Select Pass, launched May 12 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Eurail, was real.

“There are lots of people who are walking around with $125 passes,” company spokeswoman Samina Sabir said, although she would not provide numbers.

The legal picture is equally murky.

Albert Norman Shelden, a California deputy attorney general, said that, based on my description of the Rail Europe promotion, it was hard to tell whether it violated laws on deceptive advertising.

“But it’s certainly questionable,” he added. “It certainly raises red flags.”

Relevant laws heavily rely on what the seller intended to do.

Federal codes describe forbidden “bait advertising” as “an alluring but insincere offer to sell a product or service which the advertiser in truth does not intend or want to sell.” California laws on fraud contain similar wording.

One test of insincerity, in both codes, is whether the seller failed to supply “reasonably” expected demand for a product.

But how do you predict demand for an online sale?

That was Rail Europe’s problem, Sabir said. News about the $125 deal, carried in the Los Angeles Times Travel section and other publications and on websites in the U.S. and Canada, produced unprecedented response, she said.

“We were really, really surprised ourselves and dismayed it sold out,” she said. “It’s like Britney Spears concert tickets. It could sell out in five minutes or five days.”

She also noted that Rail Europe, in its news release and online notice, said the deal, offered starting at noon EST May 12, would continue “while supplies last.”

Sabir wouldn’t say how many passes the company made available for the promotion, how many it sold, how long the online sale lasted, why it didn’t make more $125 passes available or whether it received complaints about the offer.

“Rail Europe does not release data related to sales or disclose investments made in marketing efforts,” she said.

A post from Rail Europe on the social-networking site Twitter suggested that the passes sold out within eight minutes. And Kyle McCarthy, editor of FamilyTravelForum.com, a vacation planning site that posted the deal, said a Rail Europe sales agent told her that 250 passes had been allocated for the sale.

What’s a disappointed consumer to do?

Sands, a retired trial lawyer, filed a complaint about the promotion with the attorney general in the state of New York. Because the deal was advertised here, the state of California could also have jurisdiction, Shelden said.

Realistically, a complaint that involves being denied an opportunity to spend $125, as opposed to being cheated out of thousands, may not raise the pulse of either a government or a private attorney.

Consumers can also ask a company to honor the advertised price. But unlike eager shoppers who dash to a store and find cut-rate TVs sold out, online visitors may have a tough time proving that they tried to get the deal.

The bottom line: Don’t expect rain checks -- or guarantees -- on Internet promotions.

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jane.engle@latimes.com