Originally Posted by
CX860
Asking for a friend.
He is currently based in the US. As part of his package at work, he gets a plane ticket home every year. This is only in economy class and must be booked through the corporate travel agent. He wants to fly premium economy and is happy to pay the difference but the corporate travel agent is insisting the ticket be issued in economy and then changed to premium economy with the associated change fee. This is apparently to facilitate how different things are accounted for internally. Any ideas for how to avoid the change fee?
My employer has the exact same rule and set-up, it's a pain as it guarantees the agent (AMEX in my case) then gets a change fee plus the fare difference. However, your friend should be be grateful that they even offer that option - many corporate desks refuse to even countenance the upgrade. Beyond breaking corporate rules, or finding a ticket that doesn't have a change fee (note the agent will probably still charge their fee), I think there isn't a way around it. My agency will quote me fares along the lines of cheapest non-changeable, cheapest with a change fee, flexible fare in economy - but that would typically result in an "out of policy" violation for not choosing the cheapest logical fare.
This only works otherwise if they let you buy any ticket you want and then expense back what the agency would have charged, but that seems increasingly rare - we removed the option a few years ago, presumably for compliance reasons.