Hello! I just wanted to let you know of an unfortunate experience I had and to suggest that if you have a similar idea, put it out of your head and just fly all of your segments. These were business class flights. My first record locator took me from DEN->MUC->KEF and my second independent record locator was scheduled KEF->MUC-OTP. I thought, “why take an extra round trip to KEF?” Let’s be efficient, save the climate like politicians say we should, and perhaps LH could even resell the tickets. Perhaps I could just skip MUC->KEF->MUC and go directly to OTP! Seemed logical and a good night’s sleep beckoned.
Well, I got this idea 3 hours before my flight departed for KEF while waiting in MUC. I spent 90 minutes on the phone with LH. At first, I was told the ticket change “might not incur a charge” then it was “$300 USD” then 75 minutes later after my chance of taking the flight to KEF passed - it was “$1,700 USD” I was told that “these fares fluctuate minute to minute.”
Next morning, I thought I better check on my changes at the airport for my flight to OTP. Sure enough, my out-of-sequence request (I learned some new terminology) took them an additional 45 minutes to process before reissuing the ticket and was told yes it would be $1,700 USD. Then she said, oh no, it has changed to $2200 now. Then after I sadly checked my baggage, she called me back to the desk and said, good news, it was still the original $1,700 USD price as they must honor the price told to me by customer service. Sort of happy, sort of sad!
Skip forward four days - I just received a “urgent email - pleases call” this morning, that the total price ended up at $2,200 USD. I am not very happy with the way this was handled or the things I was told that turned out not to be true. By this time they already did bill the credit card so I am out the additional $500 USD.
The phone staff was not very helpful. Her English was poor and the bad thing was she kept confusing “hundreds” with “thousands”. I asked to speak to a supervisor and was told that there was “nobody there.” The LH airport staff was all very nice and tried to help, however these are the rules, and when it comes to pricing their auditors have the final say (and you are indeed told this no matter what an agent says). Unrelated, but in the MUC airport, the staff has a very uncomfortable and hot working space with little moving air. I have some concern for them that they may be mistreated there.
Lessons learned: Going out of sequence on your flights - Lufthansa is not really set up to handle this well. They don’t have an accurate price for you necessarily right away. Saving 8 hours in flying was not worth all of the time on the phone or the bureaucratic and financial problems. Sadly as I am a United Customer the extra dollars spent on the fair don’t get me any extra miles like they would on a United flight. Oh well. Lesson learned and I won’t engage the Lufthansa system outside the boundaries of established processes willingly in the future.