Asking for a friend (really): SAA fare class switcharoo
A colleague of mine feels shorted of ~2,700 PQM.
For a trip to Joburg, he bought bought tickets on United.com that had 2 legs on South Africa Airways and 1 on Lufthansa. He looked at partner fare classes ahead of time to verify mileage credit and bought S and Q fares.
On one SAA leg the S fare on the receipt became a W fare on the ticket. This meant he got a 50% PQM on that leg instead of 100%. The rest stayed the same.
He says he was told the fare classes he bought were United fare classes, which then get translated into the partner fare classes.
Does this sound right? If so, how was he supposed to know how they would be "translated"? If not, what should he do?