Another datapoint:
Since I was planning on dumping my last AUH-CMB segment and fly straight home from HKG, I called EY to make changes/book chauffeurs. The Manchester based agent was one of the nicer ones that I've encountered. After hearing that I have "a meeting" in Dubai that night and that I didn't want to no show, she said that "changes and stopover are permitted free of charge, however, you will be subjected to any fare difference." I thought to myself, oh crap, it's one of those junk talks again.
EF was showing J0 Y0 for the AUH-CMB flight and I told the agent that "I don't want to be holding on to a seat that could otherwise be sold to someone else." At this point she offered to "set the segment to 'open' and you can call back later to confirm the exact date."
This was ultimately the result I had hoped for, so I figured that I may as well get her to book the chauffeur for me as well while I'm on the phone. I gave her the address of Dubai airport, but she said that inter-airport transfers are not allowed; which is interesting given that they should allow anywhere in the UAE. She said that she'll put it in anyway and see whether it gets confirmed. At that point she asked to put me on hold for about 2 minutes while she waited for the confirmation to bounce back. A little while later, she came back and said that I wouldn't be eligible for chauffeur at AUH since I'll still technically be transiting, the only one I'm eligible at is JFK(managed to make a change/stopover earlier a JFK). I checked on virtuallythere and saw the following message for the chauffeur: "Chauffeur service
Unconfirmed for j - UNABLE TO CONFIRM CHAUFFEUR FARE NOT ELIGIBLE FOR SERVICE EY100 19DEC NN1"
My guess is that EY is trying to not honor chauffeurs since it noted that it is the fare that's not eligible. I guess...time for DOT?
To be honest, I think I've been pretty lucky with the fare overall in terms of changes and all the benefits compared to some of us here. Although I've had bad agents too both over the phone and at JFK(both male, and also female over the phone) that had flat out told me that I can't make changes since I've booked a mistake fare; I think I've also tried to push it a little bit too changing the DFW-JFK to creat a stopover, moving the JFK-AUH a day earlier, and making the open segments AUH-CMB. If I can manage to get the chauffeur, I would have no complaint
