Originally Posted by
stefanot
...bitten hierbei jedoch um Ihr Verständnis dafür, dass sie sich an die gegebenen Tarifstrukturen halten müssen. Abhängig vom jeweiligen Markt und der Buchungssituation können Onlineangebote günstiger sein, als wenn Sie telefonisch buchen. Die Mitarbeiter der Hotline haben bestimmte Zugriffsrechte, die ihnen andere Tarife anzeigen, als es online der Fall ist....
I totally agree that LH's customer service doesn't deserve that name anymore and that the cluelessness of some agents, usually combined with a considerable level of attitude, is getting worse every day.
But I really doubt that a ticket sold by the HOn Circle team would be more expensive than online as long as they would use 100 % the same booking classes and fare codes like you did do online.
The problem is that they are sometimes simply not able to get you into those cheaper booking classes.
As everybody knows, LH is not only offering much better Business-Class fares from anywhere else than from Germany but they also adjust the availability of the cheaper booking classes by the point of sale.
Which means, that when you call LH in UK, Italy or Netherlands they might still see Z/P Availability, but for the
german call center (POS=DE) the Z/P buckets are zeroed out and therefore they can only sell you D or C.
This is exactly what they are trying to say in their reply (in german I would say: herumeiern) and that drives up the price.
Would be interesting to know if this practise is in compliance with EU regulations.