expedia won't let me do a name change :(

easyken

I booked two nights in Rome over New Year for me and my girlfriend via Expedia, flying with BA. Unfortunately my girlfriend left me two weeks ago to go back to her previous fella (I was with her 2 years), and obviously she won't be going now. I still want to go, but want to take a friend instead.

The problem is that Expedia won't let me do a name change now apparently, and new flights will cost £700 for the times I want them. Does anyone on here have any advice on how I can get Expedia to do a name change? Or how to get BA to process it, if possible?

Thanks in advance.

eK

Caz3121

It all depends on the airline ticket rules, I don't believe BA do name changes even for a fee. You should be able to get a refund of the airport taxes on the ticket to offset some of the cost of the new ticket

easyken

yep it would appear to be BA who are causing the problems here! What a joke - it's very unfair. Thanks for your help.

PolishBigSpender

easyken wrote: »

yep it would appear to be BA who are causing the problems here! What a joke - it's very unfair. Thanks for your help.

No. It's not unfair. You booked cheap tickets, which came with certain conditions (not refundable, not changable, whatever). You cannot expect BA to allow you the same conditions as people who have paid significantly more to have changable, refundable tickets.

PasturesNew

Can you advertise for a girl with the same name?
Get on the telly .....

Diamond_Olly

Only charter airlines and low cost airlines usually allow name changes. Scheduled airlines rarely (if ever) allow name changes or route changes. If you pay more, you can change dates.

Heliflyguy

PolishBigSpender wrote: »

No. It's not unfair. You booked cheap tickets, which came with certain conditions (not refundable, not changable, whatever). You cannot expect BA to allow you the same conditions as people who have paid significantly more to have changable, refundable tickets.

You dont even know how much he paid for the tickets and in any case its not as straightforward as you make out.
From the op's point of view it does seem unfair and when considered BA will keep the fare and the fuel surcharge, get the OP to pay an admin fee to get back a few pounds tax, then sell that seat again, it is unfair but thats the way the airlines work.
And as a side note why do people get thanked by others who have not contrbuted to a thread.....funny that!

PolishBigSpender

Heliflyguy wrote: »

You dont even know how much he paid for the tickets and in any case its not as straightforward as you make out.

If he can't make a name change, then it's obvious that he has a cheap(er) ticket that doesn't allow name changes or refunds. Buyer beware and all that.

From the op's point of view it does seem unfair and when considered BA will keep the fare and the fuel surcharge, get the OP to pay an admin fee to get back a few pounds tax, then sell that seat again, it is unfair but thats the way the airlines work.

It's not "unfair" when he agreed to a cheaper fare in exchange for stricter conditions on the validity of the ticket. If he wanted something that gave him more security, he was free to purchase a flexible ticket. BA are not a charity, what makes you think they should alienate their high paying business customers because some people aren't capable of sticking to their original plans?

easyken

booked it through expedia, £190 return instead of £1k so yes - that's the case, but I'm trying to do a name change, not anything crazy!!

M4RKM

thing is easyken, say you were unscrupulous, and had bought up every cheap flight on the plane, and booked it under the name John Doe.

Now, you sell these on kenscheapbaflights.com and make them £450 each, because BA will do a name change regardless on a cheap flight for a £50 fee, and no one in the world can fly with BA, from wherever you fly from to Rome.

You make a huge profit of each ticket you sell, because the rules state that BA will do name changes for cheap, and all the posts on MSE are complaining that BA have no tickets cheap, and all the cheap ones are re-sold through somewhere else.

So, what we have is a catch 22 situation. You either can get tickets with limitations, and no name changes being the main one, or, airlines allow name changes, but the price of flights will easily double, because people can see they can make a profit from reselling the cheap ones, with the name change fee included.

So, if they allowed you to do what you want, then yes, it is a crazy situation we would be in, because everyone would be at it.

M

JohnCoffey

I have always used Expedia and Lastminute.com with no problems, however I tried to call expedia recently to change some details on my booking. I got through to an Indian call centre where they could hardly speak english and couldn't even get the chap to understand what I wanted to do! Eventually I just cancelled it and re-booked how I wanted it.

I was speaking to a lady recently who works at Expedia and she said that they have call centres in england and if you get through to India, just ring again and she said you should get a Uk call centre sooner or later?! Worth a try!