Originally Posted by
jrl767
paid Main Cabin ORD-PDX-SMF; inbound SYR-ORD on an AAward with a 1+03 connection
called in to see if I could SDC to ORD-SAN-SMF which would give us 1+45 at ORD; agent was able to do it, but the rate desk insisted on another $5.60pp add-collect
this all went down around midnight EDT, so I wasn’t interested in arguing at that time, but there’s absolutely no reason I can see that changing the connecting airport on a 2-segment trip would generate an additional segment fee (yes there used to be some different airport-specific fees, but I don’t recall that those have been a thing for 15+ years)
please, no lectures about the fact that I got an exception or a favor bc change of routing shouldn’t technically have been allowed … I’m querying the hive mind about how to pursue a refund of the $11.20 add-collect
This is strictly a guess, but it sounds like perhaps the agent "broke" your ticket to force the desired route and the result was the $5.60 security fee for each ticket that gets triggered from a stopover (say, separate SYR-ORD and ORD-SAN-SMF) rather than a connection (a single SYR-ORD-PDX-SMF fare).
Sparing any commentary, I think your only option is to say "I did a SDC and they collected extra fare that I don't think they should have," then play dumb on all the details. You'll either get the $11 or you won't.