Miles & More (Lufthansa, Austrian, Swiss, and other partners) - Changing awards tickets and definition of "route"

I booked two award seats (using SEN 50% discount for the second seat) LON to BKK for later this year, outbound was via FRA and inbound via VIE as this is all that was available.

Swiss have now opened up availability on LON to BKK for the dates I need -- my significant other loves them and wants to change.

I read the T&Cs at the time and again before calling which says that you cannot change the route -- which is LON to BKK -- but can change dates and times with EUR 50 penalty.

However the rather curt young lady on the SEN line told me that a change of connecting point (ie: from FRA to ZRH) is considered a "route change"

What are others experiences ? I promptly hung up in true FT fashion, rather than get into an argument with her.

Am I out of luck ??

per the rules, the route is the exact routing (e.g. LHR-FRA-BKK).

a non-published rule is that simplifications are always allowed: e.g. instead of LHR-GVA-ZRH direct LHR-ZRH.

that said, I already had several agents that also allowed a change of airline AND connection point and even had an agent who added a segment afterwards (which was pretty complicated to re-ticket).

When booking my F Award VIE-ZRH-DAR I was specifically told that I could change connecting stops for 50 EUR as long as "route" (start and final destination) stays the same.
(e.g. I could go DAR-ADD-FRA-VIE)
David

Thanks for the feedback.

The service centre in South Africa are adamant that connecting city cannot be changed.

I then tried to cancel and re-book (paying the additional miles following the 3 Jan changes) but they said that it will be 10 days for miles to be re-deposited and it is my risk whether or not the seats remain.

I dont have enough miles to cover the 2 seats, they really are not making this easy in any shape or form, and for the sake of a few key strokes .......

:td::td::td::td::td:

Any other ideas people ? I am not one to complain but with flight cancellations / delays / this issue in the past few months am getting a bit peeved with them

What they are telling you is inaccurate. It should be possible to change transit stops en-route as long as your origin and destination remain the same AND transit stops are within the same geographical area as original connecting points. So, AAA--BBB--CCC can become AAA-DDD-CCC as long as BBB and DDD are in the same zone.

You could call to Miles and More in Germany or ask your local agent to e-mail you the fare conditions and then basically point to the agent the clarify of rules.

I was able to change the connecting point a few times (leaving Starting and end point intact. 50 Euro. Once i was told this is a SEN benefit. Since you are SEN this should work for you.
Why don't you call the US number to end up in a different call center?

I love the Germans !!!

Called M&M in Germany as suggested, asked politely and received a "sure that is no problem !"

And I even get a refund on taxes that have fallen by approx GBP 100 per person !!!!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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+
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= ^^^^^^^^

I've had to split this post in two because when I tried to post all the :td::td:s and ^^s together I got the following message. :td:

You have included 26 images in your message. You are limited to using 20 images so please go back and correct the problem and then continue again.

Images include use of smilies, the BB code [img] tag and HTML <img> tags. The use of these is all subject to them being enabled by the administrator.

I am gald that I got the right number of ^^ in my last post !

A lesson learned for the future -- phone the German SEN line with anything complicated.

Thanks for all the advice