SwissexLUG

Booked a flight on LH from ZRH to CLT via MUC in Discount Economy (V class). Regarding ticket conditions (date change), LH's website showed the following sentence:

The "Basic" ticket is changeable against a fee of CHF200, as long as the originally booked class is still available. Otherwise, the difference to the next higher available "Basic" fare will be charged in addition to the CHF200.

I unfortunately had to change dates and had a bad surprise. LH asked me to pay 200 CHF (as expected) and an additional 150 EUR! Their explanation was that the 200 CHF change fee is valid only for the ZRH-MUC-ZRH section, while to change the MUC-CLT-MUC another 150 EUR were needed. No fare difference was involved.

It was not possible to read this anywhere on the LH website during the booking (complete fare conditions were not to be found) and I believed that the above sentence meant "200 CHF for the whole itinerary". I found this to be really unfair from LH: it shouldn't be possible to charge a change fee that was never mentioned in the purchase process, should it? Or at least, LH should show the whole fare conditions on its website.

Has anybody had a similar experience? Do I have any chance of getting the 150 EUR back? Thanks in advance.

rcs85551

If this was on one single ticket, then the agent was wrong.

Gnopps

If I understand you correctly; you have one ticket ZRH-MUC-CLT but with two separate fare basises ZRH-MUC and MUC-CLT. However, the LH site only informed you of the rules of the ZRH-MUC fare basis and led you believe this was the rules applicable for the whole journey.
If this is the case then this is an end-on-end pricing. The penalties you have to pay in this case are both, i.e. CHF200 + EUR150 so the agent was correct in this. However, seeing that you apparently weren't informed about the separate rules when you purchased your ticket I would call LH and ask for a supervisor authorisation to either waive the second change fee (that you were never informed about) or refund your ticket. Let us know what happens!

Eagle_Eye

this is the part of the official rule:

16. PENALTIES
BETWEEN SWITZERLAND AND THE UNITED STATES FOR V- TYPE FARES CANCELLATIONS ANY TIME TICKET IS NON-REFUNDABLE. CHANGES ANY TIME CHARGE CHF 200 FOR REISSUE/REVALIDATION. NOTE - MINIMUM CHARGE TO BE COLLECTED PER TRANSACTION. THE CHANGE IS PERMITTED ONLY UNTIL THE DATE SHOWN ON THE FLIGHT COUPON CONCERNED.....................

in my understanding the charge for a change will be "per transaction" and not per segment.
if you booked one ticket zrh-(muc)-clt and they charged you quasi double, it's not correct. ok, there is a note in the rules about a "minimum charge" from CHF 200, but you can't see this string rule on the lh-website.

write a letter to lh, explain the case and ask for a refund.

good luck.^

Gnopps

This is correct if the OP has only one fare basis ZRH-CLT (one ticket can contain several). However I doubt that as it is cheaper to combine the ZRH-MUC and MUC-CLT fares. See example below:

ZRH-MUC VABASE19 €148 + MUC-CLT VMRCDEW €310 = €458 plus taxes total

Lowest through-fare in V-class ZRH-CLT is VLNCSWW costing €754 plus taxes total.

Hence the Lufthansa webpage most likely combined these two fares as it is cheaper for the customer. In this case both penalties apply. Had he bought a ZRH-CLT fare only one penalty would apply. It is unfortunate that the Lufthansa webpage apparently don't show this clearly (haven't tried it myself) and I would definately ask for only one change fee or a refund if the webpage didn't inform me about both penalties.

SwissexLUG

Thanks guys for your valuable replies.

To answer some of the issues you raised:
1) the ticket was sold as single; ZRH-MUC-CLT and return, in fact I only had 45 minutes to transfer outbound and 1h30 inbound.
2) the fare basis appears to be the same for all four sectors: VHAX06 (the ticket was issued last year in June)

Now LH's opinion has changed. They say that the rules clearly state that there are two change fees in my case. In fact I was able to access them through Expedia and this is correct. But the problem is that they sell via the website w/o quoting the rules! Anyway they told me that they will talk to the IT department and try to fix the problem (sure they will...).

I'll try to call them again and quote the fare rules Eagle_Eye posted. Thanks again!

Gnopps

OK so it seems like you do have the same fare basis for your whole journey, yet it seems really strange that you would have two change fees in that case. Strange.

rcs85551

Those two fares are not combinable per the VABASE19 fare rules. Only -ABASE und -2ABAS type fares may be combined with this ZRH-MUC fare.

rcs85551

That does not make sense. One single fare - one single fee per change.

Grog

Not fair. Crooked.

ulev

As I understand it, the ticket was originally bought online. If this is true, you are not bound to any fare rules that have not been explicitly made available to you.

In this case I suggest you call the internet support number. That is the only way to reach the people who are responsible. From my experience, at least if you have any kind of proof, they usually honor their statements made online, even if they are in conflict with the complete fare rules. Talking to anybody else will get you nowhere, as long as the online booking people don't leave a note in you reservation.

Gnopps

I believe what you are referring to is this part (extracted from the VABASE19 rules): COMBINATIONS ARE WITH ANY -ABASE/-2ABAS TYPE FARES FOR CARRIER LH IN ANY RULE IN THIS TARIFF. However, that only refers to OPEN JAWS/ROUND TRIPS/CIRCLE TRIPS. This can be seen from the indenting, albeit very poorly through some systems. It also shows in that you can easily price these two fares as an end-on-end combination on various booking engines.
So you are right that they are not combinable on a half round-trip basis, but actually they are combinable to form an end-on-end as it is in this case.

szg

I had to refund a ticket from OS. I have also 2 booking classes (H and D class) and on my email confirmation they told me, that there is a full refund of canceling the ticket.

But OS told me, that on the ticket there is also a Economy class and the penalty for the refund is EUR 130,--.

I have send them my email confirmation and then a got the full refund. There was a mistake on the OS airmanager.

kenadams

I'd be inclined to support the above statement. The fare basis should be V, specifically VLNCSWW (755 EUR).
1) Even if the itinerary combined two fares - say V and W, with WLNCSWW (662 EUR) being more restrictive and therefore becoming the set of rules that apply - it still seems like you should only have paid one penalty per transaction, not per segment. I, too, would ask for a refund.
2) Unless, for some reason, the agent upgraded you to a higher fare. This, maybe, might have happened if V fares were out of inventory for the flight you were rebooked on. What this means is that if all V fares were sold on the flight you were rebooked to, the agent might have had to uograde your fare to Q (QLRCSWW, 848 EUR) or maybe even H (HLRCSWW, 971 EUR). I'm not sure my reasoning is correct at all - the fares don't seem to match - but it might be what happened. This is an unlikely scenario, though.

Gnopps

Again, to clarify. If you have a combination of two fare basises on a half round trip basis, then the most restrictive penalty applies. However, if you have two fare basises as an end-on-end combination then both penalties not apply, not only the most restrictive one. These are the rules that LH follows.

Example one:
FRA-LAX VFARE (CHG FEE €200)
LAX-FRA MFARE (CHG FEE €50)

In this case a change to any of the flights would incur a penalty of €200 as this is the most restrictive.

Example two:
ZRH-FRA VEUROPE (CHG FEE €100)
FRA-LAX VFARE (CHG FEE €200)
LAX-FRA VFARE (CHG FEE €200)
FRA-ZRH VEUROPE (CHG FEE €100)

In this case a change of dates on ZRH-FRA-LAX will incur both change fees,i.e. €100+€200=€300

From what the OP wrote, the latter seemed to be the case. However, with only one fare basis for the whole trip, I don't understand how LH could claim two penalties.