TravelinSperry

Never had this happen before, but I misspelled a name, omitting one letter from a last name. Called to have it changed minutes after booking and Aegean charges 20 EUR to change. Since this never happened before, I'm not sure if this is standard industry practice, but sure does seem steep to charge this fee for an obvious mistake caught minutes after booking.

NWIFlyer

Almost every airline will charge you for this - it is not unique to A3.

However, if its one letter different just travel - no-one will bat an eyelid. There are immumerable ways to spell names when translating from various languages which don't convert well onto boarding passes, and a single character in error won't be questioned.

TravelinSperry

Did a little digging and KLM allows name changes in the first 24 hours for free. So that's at least one data point saying Aegean has their hand in our pockets unnecessarily.

"My name is not written correctly. What should I do?
Passenger names should match the passport names. If your name or any other personal information is not correct, please contact us within 24 hours after your booking to change them. This is free of charge."

I thought the same thing about the single digit, but didn't want to take the chance of something going wrong at the airport so I just paid the 20 Euro. It's my fault obviously, but the airlines could be more understanding, ala KLM, in the first hours post booking.

Knobbgb

I agree. I had the same thing happen when I booked a flight for a friend and got charged 20 Euro. Funnily enough, the same friend got a job for Goldair (who do all Aegean's handling in Greece) a couple of years later and part of her training told her not to worry about small, obvious name mis-spellings like that. While the official line was "in has to match", the reality they were told to apply was "use your common sense".

TravelinSperry

I tried explaining it was just one letter. I tried the, I caught it within minutes...and even tried I'm *A Gold. She just kept repeating I must charge you. No common sense applied. Shame that. Aegean < RyanAir ;-)

romans

well if you have a time and free call minutes, try to call later, try another person on call center, it might works

jerry_greece

Or you can write a complaint letter afterwards. If you play it right, it might be that they decide to reimburse you.

Xandrios

The common sense part applies to the situation where you try to check in or board with a mismatched name. When you call in to CS - irrelevant of the change - they will charge 20 euro. That is the CS fee, and not specifically related to that single character change. That same fee is charged (on top of other fees) when you call in to do any rebooking, upgrading, refund request - basically anything that requires the CS to touch a booking.

KLouis

Be glad they only charged you 20€, ten years ago I had to buy a new ticket as the one with the mistake was neither changeable and nor refundable. The ancient Romans used to say "dura lex sed lex". No common sense back then...

yauee

We believe this their rights to charge
https://en.aegeanair.com/plan/bookin...cancellations/

Does your Aegean Flight Involve USA? if yes throw them the DOT ruling of FREE anything within the 24 hours like what KLM did.

Rarely get this FREE entitlement from Asia/Europe/Oceania/Africa. We could be wrong.

sokolov

I booked a reward ticket on AC through M&B last year and put the second middle name where the last name should have been. My mistake.

I called A3 immediately, but they said I had to cancel the award ticket and book new. Cost me €20 as well. Fortunately, there was another award seat available.

On the other hand, some years ago, I booked return tickets for a group of 4 on OU (Croatia Airlines), switching first and last names for everyone. The booking interface was in Croatian. The check-in agents didn't even mention it.

As for misspellings, I have read that there is an IATA standard they allows for 3 wrong characters. Can anyone here confirm that?

But of course you could run into ....... moves like this one, when the plane is overbooked:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmon...cket-1.2891783

TravelinSperry

It does not include the USA. Within Schengen flights only.

Jeez, that article is exactly why I called to make the change. Surely 20 Euro is better than being denied at the airport. Ah well, lesson learned. I guess I need to quadruple check when booking my +1.

giorginho

I've travelled with Aegean multiple times while having minor differences between names on ticket and names on identification documents. For example a double consonant in Greek is often translated as a single consonant in english, an "i" is often spelled "y" or vise-versa etc. etc. We've even had cases where the new passport had different spelling than the old one regarding the above. Never have we ever had an issue at the airport (I've also once mistakenly entered/selected "Mr." instead of "Mrs." for my Mrs., but that's technically even less of a mistake, since they shouldn't be asking about gender in the first place (they only do it in order to be able to address you properly).
If the flights were with Aegean, within Schengen and it was just one letter, I would have certainly gone for it, especially if that flight was originating in Greece (hell, we even currently hold a national ID and a passport for the same person that have different spelling on both the first and the last name!).

Anyway, I don't know why the comment from Xandrios , even though "liked", seems to have gone unnoticed... 20 EUR is the fee for using the call center, not for changing your name, but for whatever the reason was (where they had to take any kind of action, other than simply passing on information to you). If they had to charge for editing the name as well, it would have been 20 EUR + whatever they would have charged for that. I think the only argument that would make sense would be, that Aegean could have (as a policy) allowed for a single correction of the passengers details within the first 24 hours after booking online without using the call center (but one could also argue, that such a policy should exist with regards to all matters, like cancelling an award ticket online etc.), but other than that, it's only on rare cases, where a technical error won't allow someone to use a service, that would otherwise be available online, that Aegean would waive the call center fee (and like I already wrote, it's just a matter of airline policy/pricing and if you're using Aegean enough, you'll probably be glad that there's only that 20 EUR fee and not a complete list of different "call-center-fees" according to what gets done/changed, since that would result in huge increases on prices for services, that are now considered to be very cheap compared to other airlines).

djjaguar64

Lesson learned folks, ask a second set of eyes to double check details, like DOB, PP # and esp Name before making that payment. Unfortunately airlines are bleeding money and I don't blame them. But here was another option if you wanted to save your 20 Euros:

As per Aegean Airlines 24-hour Cancellation policy, passengers can cancel a flight booked on Aegean Airlines within 24 hours of the purchase. Aegean Airlines will provide a complete refund of your ticket cost in case the booking was made a week or more prior to the departure date of your Aegean Airlines flight.

Carpacchio

But that would only be applicable if you can make the cancellation online (which I don't know whether you can). If you need to call the call center, it will be 20 EUR again...