Mishap on return date
 

My wife and I are booked for round trip travel on United from San Francisco to Orlando in Sept/Oct of 2013. I did not pay close enough attention when the e-tickets were issued, and the return date is wrong; we were to return on October 10th, not the 9th as ticketed.

Contacting the ticketing folks, I was informed that it would cost $150 per ticket to correct this screw-up. Really? A 20% charge for the wrong return date, for a flight almost a year out? Aside from paying $300 or changing our hotel and car reservations, can anything be done? :confused:

Any suggestions appreciated...

That's the change fee for a ticket. Most airlines have them. Live & learn - always double check details.

Hope for a schedule change between now and then, which will allow you to change free. Or keep checking prices. They may reduce the fare to the point where paying the $150 "plus" the fare difference may net a refund of a small amount.

Sign-up for daily price notifications with Kayak or other web-sites. The price of your tickets may actually go down in the next few months. Change your flight when the prices drop. This will help mitigate the pain of the change fees.

I like keloutwest's approach above.

and when the client screws up and calls a meeting for the wrong day or on the wrong coast, do you forgive him, and waive all fees?

1. To answer OP's direct question, he apparently bought a discounted penalty ticket for which he pays an agreed upon penalty of $150 + fare difference for changes. He could have paid more money for the ticket and had no fees for changes. On this one occasion, he's learned a valuable lesson. Over a lifetime, he will save a lot more sticking with the discounted tickets and checking e-tickets carefully within the 24-hour window.

2. As to when to change, it's a very real crap shoot. Nobody on FT can predict what airfares will be in the next year. Even the oil futures guys are flummoxed. If fares go up, OP will be stuck with the $150 per person + the fare difference. If they go down, he will be stuck with $150 less the fare drop. If there is a significant change in schedule, he can likely get a free change, but that may or may not happen. Additionally, even if prices drop, there is nothing to suggest that his particular fare bucket will be available.

3. It may also be worth looking at other carriers over time or some super cheap fare sale where OP simply abandons his existing ticket and buys new ones for less than the $150+fare difference.

4. There are risks with every strategy.

The OP might be able to get an exception if he is a high tier elite with UA as a courtesy. I'm assuming that the ticket was purchased more than 24 hours ago if UA has this policy rather than allowing holds. (One or the other must apply to a USA domestic ticket.) Otherwise the options are as people have suggested above, although abandoning the tickets and taking another carrier should still give a UA credit for the fare minus the $150 change fee toward another UA ticket within a year.

Mishap on return date
 

If the OP was an Elite with UA there wouldn't be a change fee.

False: the OP doesn't seem to have award tickets as he states that the $150 change fee is 20% of the ticket price. Your statement is true only for award tickets and depends on the elite tier; IIRC Premium Silver wouldn't get change fees waived for award tickets for instance.

If it's a "revenue" ticket, most/all U.S. carriers allow a free change or cancellation within 24 hours of booking. That one-day window is the last "free" time to troubleshoot dates and times on a non-refundable/changeable ticket.

If it's a US domestic carrier, US law requires a free cancellation or hold for 24 hours from time of booking. UA uses the book & cancel option.

If you bought your ticket with the airline's credit card and have used that credit card a lot you might have some success. We also had to change a return date. My husband called the airline and very, very politely said that we were owners of the airline's credit card, have spent mucho $ on this card, bought the ticket with this card, needed to make that return change.... anyway possible we could be given a break with the change fee?

They were very nice and said they would not charge us the change fee and we only had to pay the fare difference which was $9.

Maybe, if you're a airline card holder, you could give it a try?

Mishap on return date
 

Extremely unusual. Good for you, but that's very rare.

The 24 hour rule saved my butt a few times when I put in the date regular style (i.e. non US style) and had tickets for the wrong months.

I would be more worried that you paid almost $750 per ticket if I understood your comments correctly.

If you buy an airline ticket directly from the airline and the price later goes down (e.g., a month later or a half-year later) can you actually (and easily) get a refund for the price differential?

And can the same be done if you bought through an agent (such as Expedia)?

No refund normally (although I think there might be an airline that does this) but you can cancel, pay whatever penalty, and rebook, so you gain if the price drop is greater than the change fee.

Haha well you got your answers and met a couple losers in the meantime that had to chime in with negative idiotic comments. post the route and price, hopefully you'll get a few more people calling you a further idiot and a few people telling you the fare will drop and when...

good luck...

Thanks all for the input.

Yes, I'm a weenie for not checking things within the allotted 24 hour window. Oh well, live and learn; I'll adjust things and shorten our stay by a day. (Which may be a good thing -- less of our cash siphoned off by Disney... :p )

FYI, after all taxes and fees, the per ticket price was $590. So I stand corrected: the $150 change fee would be about 25% of the total.

And to Slawecki, no, I don't wave ALL fees, but if I'm worried about retaining happy clients (and my understanding is that UA could use the help in this area), I'd try to work with them, especially if we're dealing with a year lead time. But again, you and others are correct, it's my fault for not paying close enough attention.

Welcome to Flyertalk.

The fee is a fee, it's not a percent. Doesn't matter what the ticket cost, the fee is the same. Don't think of it as a percent based, it's a flat fee.

On AA, when you book a flight, you can choose your dates from a calendar (grid), that way entering dates in US form (mo/date/yr) or non-US (date/mo/year) would not be an issue--I seem to remember DL, NW had the same system.

October 2013 prices out at $391 R/T for the SFO-MCO-SFO nonstops on United metal - identical fare on every day in this general timeframe.

You could refare it right now and come out $50 per ticket ahead. As others have pointed out, you'd pay $150 to get the $200 credit to use on another itin. Fly somewhere else in the spring or summer or whatever.

SFO-MCO sometimes drops into the $250-300 R/T range for off-peak travel. A gamblin' man might go for it knowing that October seats will be part of a fare sale in the spring or summer, but I could certainly understand accepting $391 right now.

Hey i'm definately part of the bunch that thinks this guy should suffer, but stupid question, can you refare more than once? Never done it being an ft elite.

Oh, sure. You can refare as many times as you like.

Whatever fare rules you're under will apply each time you do it, of course. :) On a $590 ticket with a $150 change fee, it's probably only happening one time. In this case, OP gains the benefit of a small net gain (assuming he will use the residual credit) as well as changing his dates. But from his $391 ticket, it's unlikely to happen again...unless someone drops a $99-each-way fare sale on SFO-MCO. Even then, you'd have to ask whether $150 in right-now cash is worth more than a slightly greater amount in credit that must be consumed by a fixed date.

I've refared the same Southwest ticket twice on a couple different occasions.

A question, because I don't know: what major airlines give their top-tier elites free refares on nonrefundable tickets that would cost the rest of us $150 to change? And are there any airlines that have some sort of lesser or no refare fee for non-elites? (e.g., Entire itin remains identical...purely a refare.)

Long ago, I remember visiting an AA CTO as a mere Platinum and refaring tickets, generating small vouchers to use later. No fees. I'm pretty sure Golds/Plats don't have this benefit anymore. Do EXP's?

AS has something of this nature, I believe, waiving change fees for their MVP75s.

B6 will refare the exact same flight without fee, putting the balance into a credit account valid for one year.

Airlines do not give refunds if the price drops at a later date. However, your itinerary will be re-priced if you change your flight. Your oriiginal flight may have cost $400, but if it currently sells for $300, then the airline will price your change request at $300+$150-$400 = $50.

I would make the change directly with the airline. I'm not sure what Expedia would do for you.

I always wait as long as possible before making flight changes. The change fee is the same, no matter if you change the arrival & departure dates, or arrival & departure airports. All the changes can be made at the same time for one fee.

At least with some airlines, the $50 of which you speak could actually be a $150 charge and a $100 credit to use on your next flight. Furthermore, the expiration date on the $100 credit could be the original ticket date plus 1 year.

For a frequent flier, the distinction is likely minor. You take your $100 and apply it to your next flight. For an infrequent flier, the utility of the residual credit is definitely something to consider.

The Value of an E-credit to a Non-Frequent Flyer
 

Excellent point, especially now that some credits are not transferrable.