Originally Posted by
Often1
You are being offered roughly what most carriers would offer. Either rebooking or a refund.
I can't imagine any carrier rebooking you NRT-FRA rather than NRA-JFK when you are booked on separate tickets (I presume separate tickets, not simply bookings).
There are many risks in booking separate tickets. This is just one of them.
If you were to take the refund, what would it cost to change your existing LH ticket to NRT-FRA? All depending on fare rules and pricing, that might be a relatively cheap and convenient option.
They are indeed separate tickets (as a side note, if carriers made pricing and rules for complex itineraries reasonable, more people would combine separate ticket purchases into single bookings). LH won't do anything to help either, and wanted to charge $500-800 just to change the date of my JFK-BRE flight to either of the days I requested (this is a PY ticket that originally cost around $1000 r/t).
The thing is, I am not being offered a refund in any meaningful sense. This happens (through no fault of mine, it's just when the bloody typhoon arrived) to be the end of a r/t BKK-(TYO stopover)-NYC-BKK ticket. As a result of having flown the previous legs, I would only be refunded sales tax. In addition, ANA would also not rebook--without a huge standard charge and fare difference--the ticket to some cheap date in the future when the ticket might be useful. I was told I need to rebook within the first few available days (when I can't fly) or take a refund (which is almost worthless).
Here's the core of my complaint: just as the typhoon is not ANA's fault, neither is it mine. Forcing the choice between an undesired rebooking and an almost worthless refund places all the damage/burden on the customer. This is really just "sorry you bought a cheap ticket and we won't help you."