I thought that 'defaulting to the most restrictive" was only for cancellations. In other words, if you have different fares on the outbound and the inbound and one carries a cancellation penalty, you can't cancel without a fee. But I also always heard (from my TA, and from this forum) that change fees only apply to the segment you are changing. So if I change the outbound (which carries a fee) I pay the fee. If I change the inbound (which doesn't carry a fee) then I am not charged a fee. You all are saying that this is incorrect. This is pretty confusing. Maybe this varies by airline (I mostly fly LH).