New Change Fees for Reward Tickets
 

Am I the only one that didn't know that the change fee schedule for reward flights has changed?

http://www.continental.com/web/en-US...ticketing.aspx

For most changes & redeposits, rather than a flat $150, it's now a per passenger charge, based on elite status. $0 for plat, $25 for gold, $50 for silver, $75 for everyone else.

The page at Co.com says effective 12/15/09, but I swear it's newer than that.

I made a change a couple of weeks ago, and I was charged the $150, but it looks like it should have been $25/passenger ($50 total). I asked an agent about it, and she said it looked like I was correct and should ask refund accounting to give me $100 back. I didn't even blink at the $150, as that's what I assumed it was.

Maybe I'm the only one that didn't know this, but I couldn't find it mentioned anywhere on FT.

It is that old and you are probably not the only one who doesn't know about it. I believe the new fee structure officially only applies to tickets that were originally issued after that date so if yours was older maybe it was processed correctly. But the new structure is per passenger, not per PNR, and the numbers are a sliding scale that is more favorable to elites.

ETA: It took me a few minutes to find the post announcing the new fees but it is here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/conti...m-changes.html. Bullet #11 in the first post.

My ticket was issued after 12/15 - I had completely missed the change, though, an apparently, so had the agent that processed my change.

If it was a brand new, backdated change, I just wanted to make sure everyone else knew, as well.

I guess I'm just late to the party.

ETA: I skimmed that post, before I posted about it, but obviously, I missed it.

That change has been announced for several months. I can remember seeing it at least as early as November, maybe even October. It seems a lot of agents don't know about it because when I tried to make a change they wanted to charge me the $150 and I said that's not the fee anymore, it should only be $25.

Just called to check on a change and found it (matched ANA). Less taxes, great, plus $150 p/p - not so great, agent was positive it is $150, except Plat.

Check online, >21 days no charge for Gold. Call back, find seats again, that will be $75 p/p. It took a Sup call to come up with $25 for Gold and me reading verbatim from the website what the * stated to arrive at $0.

Funny. We're 6 weeks into the new policy, and the computer still doesn't have the right fees in place, and the agents don't know about it. :rolleyes:

Meanwhile, if the fee went up, I'm sure CO's programmers would have it in the system at a minute past midnight.

With enough data points, these are the kinds of things that class-action lawyers love.

Here we go again. ;)

In December I got in arguments with 2 agents trying to change a pre-10/27 HNL BF award ticket.

When trying to change the routing, but not the O/D they wanted to charge the new higher mileage rate AND $150...a supervisor did it for me for free.

Later on the same ticket when I needed to make a date change 21+ days out and the agent also wanted to charge me $150 and said that "CO has always charged for date changes on award tickets" I read the rule her verbatim from CO.com to no avail.
I had to talk to a supe to get it done for free.

TGIP
 

Thank God I'm Plat.

When I called last week to cancel an award ticket, the agent wanted to charge me $150 so I had to inform her about the changes. She then looked it up on her computer and said it's not automatically putting in the correct fee based on the person's one pass status (i'm silver) and they have to do it manually. She was very nice about it, though!

Hello all,

I have a question regarding reward changes when one of the segments has already been flown. Specifically, I used my miles for a domestic reward ticket, SFO-DCA-SFO.

I have already flown the outbound portion, but can I change the return segment (both date/airports). Alternatively, can I redeposit the 12.5K for the part of the reward not flown?

Thanks!

Yes, by paying the appropriate change fee. You can only change the airport at one end and it still has to adhere to the regular open-jaw rules.

Nope. CO doesn't offer one-way rewards at the half-price rate.

Though I wonder if it's weather/cancellation related, you can get an exception.

It won't be easy (going outside the norm with CO never is), but I wonder if you got the right supv., it could be done.

After flying the outbound, I went into my reservation and canceled the return segment. I assumed that I'd be able to call reservations and give them my original confirmation number, pay the $25 change fee, and apply the unused 12.5k to a EWR-SFO flight at the easypass level.

The agent said that since I canceled the itinerary, I have lost the miles even though I never used the return portion. She said that I should have used "changed flights option," and that in canceling the return I forfeited the unused 12.5k.

Did I do something wrong or is this agent incorrect?

Thanks!

Sounds like this one differs a bit between how they handle revenue tickets. I would call back and fight this. Tell them it says you must cancel before travel or ticket has no value, and you did cancel before travel, and now they're saying ticket has no value. And this is the same process you use for revenue tickets.

It's gonna be a fight, but I bet you can make this happen if you're persistent and can wear them down. Once CO realizes it will cost them more to keep handling your calls on this matter than to actually give you what you want, they'll cave. Good luck!

Maybe start with Web Support -- they might have seen this before if the links online aren't intuitive.