Originally Posted by
jreichel
Thinks like this shouldn't happen, but they do quite often. Contrary to what many frequent flyers say, booking direct may be the cheapest option, but it isn't necessarily the best. Using an experienced travel agent will cost you a bit more, but they'd catch such a problem in advance and solve it for you (maybe without you ever knowing they did). If you do book direct, make sure you check in online as early as possible. This will give you more advance notice to sort things out if something is wrong with your booking/ticket.
If TA can reissue tickets, yes they can help. But since COVID Lufthansa group took away possibility to reissue tickets or do refunds without explicit airline approval at least from OTAs. It was my experience with Expedia and this is what Expedia told me. They really tried to help but were not allowed to do anything in GDS after ticket was issues without approval, which could take days if their special help line between TA and airline was busy or after hours.
Swiss changed their policy accordingly waving usual 50 CHF fee to take over TA ticket 72 hours before departure or maybe even before that. Previously it was 24 hours.