I hope you don't mind suggestions from the president of Cranky Concierge... (the username is from long, long ago before I even started Cranky). There are several things going on here both due to our mistake and geography, but regardless, this was a bad experience. You should have asked for a refund (and did, I see). We've sent you a more detailed response directly via email, but I do want to make some points here in this broader form.

1) SAS flights
While we stay on top of airline alliance changes, old habits die hard, and this one slipped through memory. It turns out our internal tools weren’t properly updated when the switch was made, but as soon as it was flagged, we corrected it to prevent future errors.

2) Staff Expertise
We assume you're seeing some third-party video on YouTube, but starting pay has gone up since whatever you saw was published. Further, we provide employees with enormous flexibility in their schedules to live and work where they please and they get retirement and other benefits, including healthcare for full-time roles.

3) Overpriced Fares
This one is unfortunately something that frustrates us as well, because of how Lufthansa handles pricing in the Sabre global distribution system. The lowest fares are only available through an NDC connection, but we are still waiting for Lufthansa to turn this on for us. This doesn't impact our primary business of long-haul flying, but for intra-Europe, it can cause some discrepancies.

This was clearly a bad experience, and it's not what you would regularly get from us at Cranky Concierge. We are US-based and primarily help customers traveling to and from North America on complex long-haul itineraries. While we're always happy to help people anywhere in the world, it can be a more challenging task for a US-based company.