It is not announced yet, but just got off the phone with One Pass agent that as of Jan 1, 2003, CO will start collecting $100 change fee for award tickets ( I was told any changes, no matter if it reroute, or just simply date/time change). The $35 redeposit fees will go up to $50.

[This message has been edited by sxchan (edited 12-17-2002).]

This should prove to be interesting--I got quite different info from the OnePass service center last week (for instance, the $50 redeposit fee is only for non-elite members). See http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum20/HTML/006860.html for what they emailed me.

If you think about it though, what the agent told you makes absolutely no sense, since if you needed to change something on the itinerary, you might as well just redeposit the miles and issue a new reward ticket (since it would only cost you $50 to redeposit, rather than the $100 to change). I don't see how it would make any difference from an availability standpoint whether its a ticket reissue or just a new issue...

This is very steep. CO awards are hard to get so some people may settle for an inconvenient date and hope that award seats on their intended date open up.

It's CO fault, not the passenger's, that awards are hard to get. CO awards are harder to get than other airlines. CO should not penalize those for trying to work with CO and then change dates when award seats become available. After all, award seats are goodwill and last minute seats that open up are seats that can't be sold anyway.

I consider the $100 fee abusive and encourages me not to fly CO. In my opinion, I don't see the redeposit fee as abusive as the $100 fee.

I could be wrong here, but I don't think there are any guarantees that if you relinquish a reward seat (redeposit your miles) that the seat you had would go back into award availability. In fact, I have been told the exact opposite.

Therefore, they could hold you up even more to change an itinerary than a redeposit.

Very true--depending on how much you're changing your itinerary. I guess when I make changes to a reward ticket, they tend to be major changes (i.e. different city pairs, completely different dates, etc.), for which I could care less what inventory the original seats get dumped into. If you're only making a change to one of the flights, however, I could see where you might get screwed if the seat is no longer available.

Still, it just seem strange that a change would cost more than a cancellation...and this still doesn't match up with what OnePass emailed me just this past Friday.

(edited for clarity)

[This message has been edited by EnhancedByCO (edited 12-17-2002).]

It is sort of ironic that a re-deposit and re-booking, which requires two transactions, costs less than a simple change! But in an industry where one-way costs more than round-trip, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

The even bigger irony is that if award availability were more reasonable, then they wouldn't have so many people calling to try to make changes to get the dates they really wanted in the first place, they could hire fewer reps, and they wouldn't have to charge the bloody fee.

Think they'll ever get it?


[This message has been edited by Paulo (edited 12-17-2002).]

Given how fresh the chnges are with charging the change fees and hiking the redposit cost, this'd be bad PR indeed. Makes me feel better about moving some 180K miles over to United even with UA's problems. And this kind of treatment would cement my decision to jump ship after this year. Award availability problems aggravated by abusive fees are intolerable; it makes you question what you're earning the miles for.

Don't believe anything a CO res agent tells you about what's gonna happen in the future, heck, most of the time they don't know what the rules are right now.

Good point, snake...

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if CO moves to the $100 change fee. Problem is, we can now see the availability via the website, and simply hold a new res while cancelling and redepositing the old res.

But that's par for the course. The airlines (in general), have done everything they can to lower their costs (no problem), yet they still expect us to buy the higher fare, and grumble when we don't.

Have you ever read the story of the 747. Because of it's size, the airlines were able to offer drastically lower fares because of the efficiency the 747 offered in certain markets. Australia-US was cited as an example.

Can you imagine if the 747 were to be introduced today? The airlines would love the cost savings the aircraft provided, but still expect us to pay the same old high fares! And then, they'd whine about the airplanes not being full!

Thankfully, it appears the days of the old-fashioned airlines is quickly coming to a close....

Is CO an "Old fashioned airline"?

Oh, what about WN?, they've been working the same 'ol business model over 20 years!

FYI, I've been told that the new change fees are for reward tickets issued in 2003. Therefore, get your tickets by the end of 2002 and you don't have to pay fees. Could be wrong, but sounds like a savings to me.

Yes.

Of course CO is an old-fashioned airline, just look at their thinking! Same old, same old!

Personally, I consider WN to have been ahead of their time. Their business model was so outrageous at the time, but today makes perfect sense!

So when I make an award reservation for six months hence, and Continental changes the reservation on me three or four times, as is not uncommon, I'm sure Continental will agree that it's only fair and equitable that they pay me $100 each time they change the dates, times, or routings on me.

you might want to share whatever it is that you are smoking....