Flex-Flex-Saver Issues
 

This was interesting.

Booked a Flex return ticket for my sister and her kids (in Y). They are coming to Singapore over these school holidays. I then needed to push the outbound flight out by one day as my sister changes her mind more than Amelda Marcos at a shoe sale.

Anyway, thought than rather than send an email to my local EK office, I would try the whole "you can manage this all online" feature.

So I pulled up the booking, changed the date by one day and the system says I owe them some paltry fee. Which I pay via credit card. All seems to work just fine.

Then I go into the booking a few hours later as I managed to find 3 x J seats for their return flight home. Login into MYB again, click upgrade, then the system tells me I owe it 37,500 miles per person for the upgrade (and not the 30,000 miles I should have) given that the fare was Flex both ways when originally booked.

Here's the glitch.

When you go into manage your booking online, (like do a date change), the system refares the ticket to the cheapest possible (in this case, Saver). But it doesnt tell you its doing this. You find out the hard way.

After a lot of arm waving - the local EK office sorted it out. And put it back to Flex. Its a big difference - because the difference in miles across the 3 tickets was 22,500 (or US$900 if you had to pay for them)

So be warned. If you go into change a booking online - your Flex ticket could very well become a Saver. In the blink of an eye. That means half the miles earned (tier and Skywards) and a lot more miles required to upgrade.

I will let you know when the glitch is resolved...

As opposed to when they sell you what you think is a Flex fare during booking and then it magically becomes a Saver upon ticketing (at the same price of course).

Or when you purchase a fare as a Flex fare, but when you change your dates the same fare basis booked in the same fare class has now become a Saver?

Emirates' oast Flex/Saver issues were flim-flap deception at best. This is no surprise.

If even you resorted to "arm waving" EB I cannot begin to imagine what ung1 would have resorted to!

I wish I had seen this earlier. I did a date change on a Flex ticket and didn't notice (didn't even think to check) that the Flex ticket would be re-ticketed as a Saver ticket (they still charged me an increase fare for the date change in addition to the change fee).

I only noticed this after flying the sector and seeing only half the miles get credited.

I am now attempting to get this fixed and get the miles credited so we'll see.

Weirdest thing is that it sometimes works the other way as well. I had a Flex J ticket and I had to do a date change online .One of the available options was a F ticket (for a £30 change fee).

I assumed that I was just lucky and this was some weird saver F fare which cost the same as a Flex J. However MMB showed flex miles for F and after the flight I was credited with Flex miles for F as well. I still havent figured this one out. :confused:

PS: I did a lot of dummy bookings around the same dates and flights to see if there were any special sale fares but did not see any..!

This has happened to me twice.

It's a really bad fault and only once did ek sort it out the other time I had to pay the fare difference.

here is the reply from Emirates to my request:

"Dear Mr. XXXX,

Thank you for your email reply.

Allow us to explain that at the current time, it is unfortunately not possible to give Skywards fare types or
miles breakdowns during the Online Change process. We wish to assure you that you will always be quoted
the lowest applicable fare for changing your flight to your new date, which may imply that in order to minimise the change cost, your new fare may be a Saver fare.

However, whilst the new fare may be a Saver fare, it does not necessarily mean that it will be lower than the
one already paid. This is because fare levels (either Saver or Flex fare) may change since the time your original ticket was issued.

We regret any inconvenience caused in this case, however we are unable to now make any change to the fare
of the ticket.

Mr. XXXX, at Emirates, we always aim to provide the highest standards of service that our passengers have come to expect and we do hope that this recent experience has not marred your impression of the service offered by Emirates.

Thank you for your support of Emirates and we look forward to welcoming you onboard.

Yours sincerely,"

Its funny. I'm a Gold BAEC member and a Exec Platinum AAdvantage member and in both of those programs when they have screwed up they have given me miles or upgrade certs to compensate. Emirates, on the other hand, doesn't want to give me a lousy 1,750 tier miles for something they admit is their own problem. I'm just supposed to accept it but continue giving them my business. I've been a Gold member for donkey's years and given I grew up in Dubai I have been flying Emirates from its start, its strange they refuse to budge on something so small.

EK hasn't screwed up though , but given a proper response addressing the issue clarifying that online changes will always give lowest fare option and that this is by current design

If having specific needs, now know to telephone and make the change

I'm not arguing that they shouldn't give the lowest fare, or that it is by design. My point is that there is no warning of this and having a saver/flex combo ticket is non standard. When you originally book a ticket you do not have a choice to have saver/flex combos. Sometimes it happens as there may not be saver inventory so you get a partial flex ticket, but if you choose for a Flex ticket thats what you get. My argument is purely that there was no warning of any kind and no way for me to know this, nor any reason that I should suspect it. The point in choosing a Flex ticket is for the miles (potentially the upgrades but that is less of a perk now, and Flex doesn't mean 'Flexible' you still pay fees), so if they are going to change my ticket type there should be a clear notice that is happening and that if I don't want that to happen I need to call and speak to a person.

The screw up is that none of that happened. I would have happily paid extra for a Flex ticket on the change had Emirates bothered to tell me, and given its only 1,750 miles it seems very poor that they won't budge.

At the end of the day, as the saying goes, the customer is always right. Given Emirates admits there was no way for me to know and that their system (for reasons unknown) can't handle changing Flex tickets properly I don't see how its much to ask for me to be made whole on this.

No, the customer is not always right

It is right not to give compensation where nothing has been done wrong and the reticketing was done in accordance with its policy for doing so

EK's response seems actually properly addressing the issue raised which is better than I have seen with AA / BA and complaints

You are not lacking in wholeness; you made a change, paid the change fee that gave the ticket that you have. Have you tried asking whether EK will waive the change fee and allow payment of the difference to the higher fare class ; if not is it worth paying the change fee and fare difference to get 1750 miles; if so, then can always do so

Another thought on this topic. American Airlines has the same issue with their online booking system, it always switches you to the lowest available fare class. You can make a booking, call an agent and have them switch fare classes (say for better upgrade chances or more miles) however when you go back to your booking and try to pay for it it often (though not always) reverts back to the lowest available fare. However, it tells you this. It tells you the fare bucket you are in and tells you that the system found a cheaper fare than the one you had and shows you your new fare bucket. You can then either proceed or call the agent on the phone and have them change it and pay there.

My biggest problem is that Emirates doesn't warn you and then tells you, after the fact, that there is nothing they can do. That is BS as they could easily just add the miles so they are lying to their loyal customers.

For making a new purchase, EK allows the subset of customers that are Skywards members to specifically purchase flex or non flex. The AA site seems to offer no such feature

I have never managed to make a change to an AA booking online but have managed it with Emirates.

Now that EK has clarified the process. for future situations, now know that just need to call up if wanting to get a specific fare class.

Where is the re-ticketing policy stated that you will be put into the lowest available fare class regardless of your original choice? Where is the warning if/when that happens on the booking? Why would any customer who hasn't been burned by this even think to check (given there is no warning)?

I know very few people who want to pay more than the minimum cost when making a change and those that do, can pick up the phone

but those people probably aren't buying Flex fares to begin with.

and again, its not about picking up the phone, its about the total lack of warning. If EK clearly stated their policy when making the change thats one thing, but as they don't, its totally different.

anyway, obviously we aren't going to agree on this.