CALlegacy

The party that invited him to the engagement sabotaged him out of stupidity or perhaps out of policy regarding travel expenses. It is certainly not a fault at either Delta or Expedia. I am not sure there is a simple way to express a problem regarding compensation for providing a service of speaking. Maybe he should tell his host what happened and suggest a hotel upgrade or other benefit to compensate. Maybe it is just how the twig snaps. In the extreme he could tell his host that his policy is that he doesn't travel BE and they need to cancel and buy him a new ticket. It all depends on who he is and who they are. It could be a lesson to find a tactful way to warn potential hosts to verify what their travel people are doing, if you have the clout to do that.

jonathanbak

From what I understand it is a small non-profit organization who probably doesn't have any travel policies, most likely they don't understand fares or they thought they were saving money when it said 'basic economy', funny thing is the main cabin ticket at the time my Dad wanted to fly was a dollar cheaper. Since they are a small non-profit my dad says he doesn't want to make a big fuss about it with them, he may tell them about BE but I doubt he will ask for anything. From now on though he will make clear he doesn't want BE fares when he is invited places.

ijgordon

I forget the nuances of the differences between AA/UA/DL basic economy fares, but I think on at least one you literally have no choice of seat. You get what's printed on the boarding pass. I know AA will let you pay extra to pre-assign a seat starting, I think at T-72h, but not entirely sure about the others.

3Cforme

Go to Expedia.com to make a Delta Basic Economy booking. DTW-FLL is a fine route. Note the warnings with hyperlinks. Then try arguing it's unclear.

btonkid12345

My father had similar circumstances once. Luckily we caught it within 24 hours.

Now, if we want someone else to book it for either of us, we don't just send them the airline and FF# - we send them the exact itinerary and total cost it prices at, that we want. That way, it is precise and the booker doesn't have to look for options or make assumptions to select one of multiple options.

jonathanbak

UPDATE:

Let me just say that the DL Twitter team is so much more helpful than the call center. When I called Delta for my dad the other day they agreed to the change but they got a supervisors permission to change it, but for a charge of 50 dollars to take over the ticket, and the fare difference and they refused to change it to the later flight without a 200 dollar change fee, so it was going to cost over 300 dollars to change. But I sent a twitter DM for my dad and they noticed that the supervisor had documented the ticket to allow changes, so twitter team fixed and got him the later flight as well. Even got the 1 Dollar refund for the fare difference.

Thank you Delta!

Often1

The thread title is misleading because it may well be that the BE booking was intentional, if perhaps uninformed. I am no fan of Expedia and think that using third-party sites is a terrible idea unless there are tremendous savings. But, on this issue, one cannot criticize Expedia. The differences are clear.

I do not permit others to book travel for me. If some organziation has budget constraints, I may well live within those constraints and kick in my own funds to purchase what I want. But, I do the booking and control it.

tangfish

The Expedia thing really sucks, that's why I avoid the portals for flights (use Orbitz quite a bit for hotels).

Gosh I really, really, REALLY hate Basic Economy as a thing. I use Google Flights to track flight prices on the regular and the existence of Basic Economy now has all the flight prices wrong. There is no way to indicate "regular economy" in a search, so all the results are for basic economy. I wish instead they'd always quote the regular economy price and then during checkout try to downsell you to basic economy for $50 less or whatnot, but that would be too good to us consumers

Kevin AA

Someone should create a website that pulls published fares that are not basic economy so it's easy to eliminate BE from a search.

xliioper

Once again, Expedia/Orbitz/etc. all indicate Basic Economy fares and give you the option to buy up. So what exactly is the beef? Perhaps it may not be perfectly and absolutely crystal clear to a kettle, but I don't believe that appropriation would apply to you. I certainly do understand the Google Flights complaint. And, also, while they are fixing that issue, they should also fix the issue of lumping both C+ and real Premium Economy fares under the "Premium Economy" search designation.

davidviolin

Booked a BE by mistake on another site than Delta, called Delta up and asked if I could pay to upgrade it to a main cabin, the answer was a firm "no, thats not possible." Wonderful.

jonathanbak

Ask them to speak to their supervisor, only a supervisor will be able to allow changes (if I'm not mistaken). When I called for my dad the agent at first said it isn't possible, but then she said she'd ask her supervisor and he/she allowed the change.

DCP2016

While in the past I've had some really lovely phone agents, I have mainly had luck lately using Twitter. Basically I only call as a last resort now.

Gig103

Yeah, the aggregators need to add a button for "Avoid BE". It's sort of like, on AA, that since C+ isn't a separate category you have to get all the way to seat selection to see how much more it costs. Of course, there are perks to that (like it not being an upgrade process for elites).

Oj778

I don’t know if Im lucky or not, but I purchased Basic Economy deeply discounted airline tickets in December for April through Priceline for Delta. About 1 month ago had a 90+ min schedule change. I called Priceline to make alternate arrangements but they wouldn’t change it to the exact flights I wanted. So I called Delta, told them about the situation with Priceline and the operator “took over the reservation” and changed it to the flights I wanted without any issue (still ticketed in basic economy though).

Earlier today, got another email containing another 90+ minute schedule change. Called Delta to make alternate changes. However this time not only did he change my tickets to the times/flights I wanted but I noticed once I received my confirmation email I’m now ticketed under “main cabin” (B). I went in no problem afterwards to change my assigned seats.

Just goes to show, it’s wise to take advantage of 60+ minute schedule changes.