Originally Posted by purch

Hello,

Sorry for the long post. I hope you guys will be able to help answer a question which so far the voyager and SAA call centres have not been able to, regarding cancelling an upgraded ticket. My parents-in-law have the following tickets booked:

Ticket was originally an open jaw JNB-FRA, IAD-JNB booked in eco K and upgraded with voyager miles. The outbound JNB-FRA has already been flown, the inbound IAD-JNB is planned for next week. Due to a small family emergency, we wanted to get them to go back to JNB via FRA. I considered the following options:

1) Change the inbound to be FRA-JNB (we already have a separate award booked to get them to FRA). According to the call centre, this is not possible, because the ticket has been upgraded. I find this a bit strange, as I would have expected a K fare to be changeable in this way. I would of course expect to lose the upgrade, and pay the difference (if any) to the current fare for FRA-JNB, but I would still expect it to be technically possible.

2) Cancel the inbound completely, and figure out a way to get them back to JNB at a later date, maybe with another award booking. First I was told that the ticket had become non-refundable (?!??) because it had been upgraded. When I argued it was based on a flex eco ticket, he then said the miles + tax difference for the upgrade would not be refunded, and agreed that the unused portion of the original K ticket could be refunded, but could not tell me how much or what the fare rules are. After 30 mins on hold, he said nobody could tell him, and that I should call SAA reservations. Of course they couldn't answer because it's been amended by voyager, but did say that they would need to ask the international rates desk to advise what the refund would be. Twice I asked for this, and was told to call back later, and when I did, the information had not been calculated for me.

Has anyone here got any experience with changing routes or cancelling upgraded tickets? I don't think it should be this hard. I thought LH/LX has bad IT, but at least they can tell me in 3 seconds what the fare rules on my ticket are...

For what it's worth, I've looked at some current K fares on that route and they all seem to be refundable without penalty, as I would expect of a high-fare ticket. I just don't want to make any assumptions. If the ticket truly has become non-refundable, then I would rather change the date of the IAD-JNB to as soon as possible, and then buy another eco ticket to get them from JNB to FRA.

P.S. what is the reason for not refunding the miles when removing the upgrade? Most airlines I know will redeposit the miles. Could it be that only return upgrades are possible, so if cancelling one direction, then you simply lose it? I can't believe it's a general policy that if you cancel an upgrade, you just lose everything.