Reader Bill writes:
I need help! I accidentally booked flights for the wrong weekend via Air Tran. The flight is from Chicago to Sarasota, and it was a promotional fare that ended last night. Not only are they charging me to switch the flight (it’s in APRIL!), but they are also charging me the difference in fare because the promotion is over. Anything you can suggest?
Sorry to give you bad news, but you may be out of luck. AirTran has a pretty standard set of rules — published here — and requires a $60 fee plus any difference in the fare if you want to change a ticket.
I don’t see any way you’re going to get out of that policy, unless you can sweet talk the call center into making an exception.
Alternatively, instead of rebooking the tickets, you could pay $60 to cancel these tickets, and have the value of the tickets put into a credit voucher, for you to use within one year. (I assume they’d just deduct $60 in value from each ticket, rather than making you actually pay $60.)
This voucher option may be the way to go. If AirTran has another fare sale, you could potentially get better bang for your buck than you could right now. But it’s a gamble, and you may not be able to use the voucher for the Sarasota trip as planned.
UPDATE: Looks like Bill is quite the sweet-talker after all!
Thanks Mark! I ended up speaking with a supervisor who waived the $60 change of ticket fee, meaning I only had to pay for the difference in fare (around $65). Not too bad.
Not too bad, indeed. That supervisor was a good soul, since you didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. But it proves that a friendly request can go a long way.
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January 30th, 2007 at 10:13 am
I’ve had a similar experience with Delta. Accidently double booked my business trip, but the kind woman put my more expensive ticket on voucher (unlike United, Delta does issue partial vouchers if you buy a ticket less than the value of the voucher). Now, it wasn’t as simple as that. I called the main reservation line and they didn’t move an inch, but a call to the SkyMiles reservation line yielded the desired results.
My advice to those that have miles with an airline is to always call the program’s reservation line, it has tended to yielded better results. Especially for those of us with high milage balances.
January 31st, 2007 at 6:45 am
We had a similar problem with American, but the results weren’t as sweet. They wouldn’t budge from their $100 fee at all…”I’m sorry, but this is standard for all airlines and we think it’s a competitive cost.”
Alas, there we’ve had so many problems with American [albeit the one above was one of my own making] that I try to avoid them as much as possible.