Coming back to this - and I am very upset!
I just changed the outbound leg of a ticket and was surprised about how inexpensive it was. The lady in the AF call centre explained to me "of course, we only change the outbound. We don't touch the return. Even if the price of the return leg has gone up in the mean time that doesn't matter, because we don't change it". Of course I thought that in any case the computer would have done the re-pricing, so I specifically asked her if the old booking class for the return was still available to see whether by the previous logic a bump into a higher booking class would have been required: and indeed, old booking class no longer available. According to the lady a few weeks ago, this would have required re-pricing the return as well, even if I changed only the outbound. According to the lady today, this was not necessary.
I have done all kinds of changes and re-routes and different tickets just to optimise the family's travel expenses, based on the first information I got a few weeks ago. Had I received the information that I got today a few weeks earlier, our summer would have been much smoother and I would have been able to avoid one useless return trip.
As much as I praise AF for many good things they do since some time, the inconsistency in information, the contradictions, the cluelessness of their people, and the careless sloppiness and indifference of their staff really really annoys me. I just absolutely hate it when things that should be clear, have rules and thus have predictable outcomes end up being a complete lottery only because every staff member does things his own way (and of course it's always the client who is wrong). And it's even more annoying when that lottery then leads to other, costly, decisions that otherwise would not have been made. But of course the staff don't give a sh**t, they sit in their office, tell their incompetent gibberish to customers without even wondering whether something could be wrong even when told by customers, who are then left to deal with the consequences.
