“It was never my intention to cheat Continental Airlines out of any money”

Lori Kaufman didn’t mean to play the system. She just wanted to reschedule her flight so she could attend her grandmother’s funeral.

In the process, Continental Airlines ended up dinging her for a total of $954 — more than twice what she’d originally paid for the tickets. It also failed to tell her it would be billing her credit card that much, she says.

Kaufman thinks the airline should return some of the money.

The original tickets, she explains, were booked for a family wedding. About a week before the flights from Minneapolis to Cleveland, she changed her outbound flight so she could make it to her grandmother’s funeral. That’s when she got her wires crossed with Continental.

It was never my intention to cheat Continental Airlines out of any money. My initial request, in a phone call to a reservations agent, was simply to cancel the first leg and maintain the return leg of the flights for which I had already paid $561.

Instead, Continental Airlines charged me an additional $477 per ticket so that I could keep the seats on the June 14 flight that I had already purchased once before.

That means that I paid a grand total of $1,515 for two one-way tickets on a flight from Cleveland to Minneapolis. Doesn’t that seem outrageous, especially since the reason for my flight change was the death of my grandmother?

Yes, it does. But why did Kaufman agree to the inflated fare?

Well, both my husband and I spoke with reservation agents Satuday morning (6/5) to rebook the tickets. We were each informed (in two separate phone calls) that the total for new tickets would total $477.

That was the total for both tickets, not each one individually. That price made sense to us: $300 in change fees and two one way tickets for $353 each. Then, we subtract our credit of $561. However, my credit card was charged $477 twice!

I suggested she write to Continental, explaining the misunderstanding. Airlines have special policies when it comes to bereavement fares, and it appears to me those weren’t followed. I put Kaufman in touch with some higher-ups at the carrier, who could straighten this out.

And they did, of course.

So here’s the fix: According to Kaufman, the booking wasn’t changed the way it was supposed to.

Ideally, in our first call to ticketing, the representatives should have simply canceled our outbound leg, per our request, charged a change fee for each ticket, and then left all else alone.

However, the representatives instead resold us our same tickets under a new fare code and charged the change fee, too.

While Continental insists it did nothing wrong, a supervisor says that since the flight was being changed because of a bereavement, the couple was entitled to the return of its ticket and change fees.

I love a happy ending.

(Photo: US Army/Flickr Creative Commons)

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

Tagged as: BEREAVEMENT, Continental Airlines, FEE, ticket

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