AnaTFN

Hi Forum, I had booked flights for next week from Oslo to Tenerife through Lufthansa, although operated by Swiss and Edelweiss. Business saver fare with all 4 sectors in business.

Last minute mess at work and I have had to move the departure by some days. I was able to do this myself through the on-line system, and it offered me to rebook only on the Business price column (makes sense since that was our class), it offered me flights operated by LH over Germany, and also by Brussels Airlines over Brussels, which was the cheapest rebooking option. I had to pay about 700 extra euros in rebooking frees plus difference fare. I did that.

When I went to select the seats for the Brussels flights it turns out the second segment is an airplane with only economy, and I have to pay for our seats and luggage. I have paid for the seats to be able to sit together. I need your advice:

1- At no point during the rebooking it indicated that one segment would be economy, it all indicated I was paying for business. This looks like an involuntary downgrade to me, since we will not only not have the service we expected (including priority and lounge and an empty seat between us) but also the terms like seat and luggage included. Had I known we would have flown over Germany which was only 15 euros more per person.

2- I want to request Lufthansa to reimburse me the extra costs for seats and luggage given that it had indicated I was buying business which comes with free seat and luggage. What would be the best way to request this? the phone number in the website tells me it no longer works and to call another one, the second one tells me they have a very high number of calls and hangs up on me after the message. I understand with the strike it is a bad time for that. What do you recommend? I wanted to reach out immediately in case a quick contact could make them re-booked us still in business (needs to be another of the possible routes, Brussels flight is 1-class only), I can't do that myself online, would need to pay fees again.

thank you!

AnaTFN

See the class: "economy class" with "business saver fare". How is that considered ok???? to pay business and to get coach.

kai.lileboo

As far as I know, there is special note on LH web (app) when changing a booking advising that you have to check NEW fare conditions, as this may change. That means, if you have C business, and you are offered P business, the new conditions are applied, and P doesn't have free cancellations nor changes. So beware of that.
On some flights where you mix different airlines (with LH group code share) it is possible that original fare is Business, however where business is not offered you are booked into Y eco class. You have to be very careful to check all this before making the change.
It also happens on intercontinental flights where there is no First on intra EU and you are booked into J business instead (but paying First all the way)
I don't think you could do anything now, as your ticket has already been reissued and and new ticket conditions prevail.

AnaTFN

What you say makes total sense, my frustration is with the lack of warning. I did not use the app, but the web. Here is a dummy booking of the same flights we got, as you see there is no indication in the Business Saver that this will only apply to one segment, and I have that ridiculous situation where I have a business fare for an economy class so it is not as if they had been clear that there was an economy segment included. The lack of warning is the frustration (also the very elevated cost to end up flight coach). I did not have any new fare warning since they kept my fare.

They are unreachable on the phone for the last hour since I rebooked. I hope there is something that can be done.

fassy

Yes, thats sucks.... ALWAYS check the booking classes....


then you see the BRU-TFS leg is in economy (Y)


But still.... they say it is Business... and most normal people wouldn't know Y means economy.

A hint could have been the seat map... they even charge 15 NOK for ANY Seat, 21 NOK for row 1-3 and 401 NOK for Emergency Exits and there is actually says: Economy class



This is IMHO close to fraud. But obviously accepted by the regulators and you will get nowhere complaining about it.

They do the same on e.g. SAS flights.... you book business, they charge business, they call it business, even the booking classes are business... but you end up in SAS Plus which is faaaaaar away from a business class product. You can argue if it even qualifies as Extra Economy.

AnaTFN

Thank you for checking all that! and exactly as in your screenshots, I only noticed in the seat map, a single-class airplane and had to pay for seats. For every step until then it called it always business.

I have status with KLM so if it had been with then I have hopes that they would try to compensate us somehow. But I never fly Lufthansa/Brussels, none of us has status, so I'll see if at least i can get the cost of the seats reimbursed.

livious

We had this happen during the recent SAS pilot strike and they did eventually reroute us so we could fly business, so the problem is to reach them by phone. Just to note, you can apply for EU comp for the downgrade if there are no other options. I am not sure how stingy LH would be, but SAS openly told us that we would be compensated when downgraded.

fassy

The problem is, OP "REBOOKED" the flight on his/her own, it wasn't an involuntary change. So, LH will refuse to pay downgrade compensation as OP wasn't downgraded....

livious

Aha, that would be a problem. Thanks for pointing that out. I would still keep calling and see if LH would rebook to the correct class, but things might be tricky now.

AnaTFN

I rebooked into one of the 5 Business class options that they gave me. But it wasn't.
Call it false advertising instead of downgrade if you might, but really everywhere this flight (economy) shows in all lufthansa materials as a business purchase and it is priced and offered as such.

fassy

Yeah, I know. It sucks. But same applies to F flights.



The first segment is LH F, second not even business but SK Plus which not even offers as free middle seat. Still the whole ticket is sold as F. (actually funny enough, in this instance the First Basic Plus is cheaper than the First Basic...)

AnaTFN

Exactly, the way they present it is very misleading. And in our case we are already booked into business, so when i changed the day it only showed me business options and there was no warning at any step that the conditions of the far that I was booking into were not available for some segment. They don't have that type of warning. It clearly will happen to more people because the booking system miss-represents what you are booking (and offered me another class when rebooking from business, not flagging it)

Deckter

OP, if speaking with LH gets you nowhere, try a chargeback with your credit card. It looks like you have screenshots to prove your point.

Fabo.sk

I absolutely agree, in this cases, something like "Warning! Your travel class in not available on one or more of flight selected" needs to be displayed.

weero

I do not think that "Y" means economy in common parlance. It still says Business.

That isn't directed against you, you clearly agree that this is dodgy.[/QUOTE]
Would the OP have an argument that the rebooking was made less than 24h ago and is hence subject to free changes?