Booked flight with wrong surname, £700 to change!

richardw

How far are you from an airport with a Continental desk? If practicable, talking face to face may help.

c-m

To change your name in the UK all you need to do is decide to be called something else.

For all the airline knows you two go married in between booking the flights. There is no need to change your passport to your married name.

I understand that the airline could get difficult though. They set their own rules most of the time.

luci

c-m wrote: »

For all the airline knows you two go married in between booking the flights. There is no need to change your passport to your married name.

Correct, there is no need to change your passport to your married name. However the name on the flight ticket and passort must match.

mikey72

Do you fancy going on honeymoon to the states?

alex20111

alex20111 wrote: »

Yeah I've tried the US number but that just seems to go straight back to the same Indian call centre.

Thanks for all the replies.

I have actually managed to sort it. I spent 6 hours on the phone yesterday and countless hours searching around online for information but that completely failed. I mentioned above that I called the US number but that went straight to the same Indian call centre. I tried a different number this morning which somehow went to the US, so after a couple of long calls speaking to a sympathetic person, I have been able to change the booking at a cost of £213.50. This represents the difference between what I paid and what it would cost to book now. They appear to have waived the usual flight change fee which I believe is $150. This is still expensive but much better than the alternative proposed by ebookers and the United call centre, who were adamant that I would have to pay up and book a new flight.

I came to work resigned to the fact that I would have to pay out all our holiday spending money booking the flight. It is absolutely ridiculous that you can spend hours calling various call centres, all refusing to do anything (because they have strict rules set for them), but if you find the right one they can do something. The call centres in India aren't allowed to apply any common sense to assess case by case. I'm just glad I found the right number. I'm going to be complaining about this to ebookers, they were useless at trying to sort this.

I'll certainly be very careful booking flights next time!

richardw

Glad you got it sorted.

Don't for get to click on the Thanks button.

cubegame

And one big tip for the future is never ever book a flight via an internet agent. Go local or book direct.

melb

I've done it for him

cactusdust

cubegame wrote: »

And one big tip for the future is never ever book a flight via an internet agent. Go local or book direct.

This logic doesn't make an awful lot of sense. Surely one big tip is to double check everything before hitting the "book" button.

2sides2everystory

2 cleverdick posts on one thread

Interesting that richardw's suggestion of speaking to an organgrinder rather than a monkey might yield a different result worked yet again . Richard gave me this useful advice when I had a problem with KLM recently.

The trick is sorting the monkeys (who are usually outsourced call centre types) from the organgrinders (who might as a direct airline employee have a stake in the airline and it's reputation).

I would guess that alex20111 actually did finally get someone along the monkey-organgrinder spectrum slightly towards the grinding end but clearly not an actual organgrinder or this simple mistake would have been sorted free of charge.

I HATE businesses who prey on customers who make simple mistakes for pure profit. Had the flight been within hours of the booking then maybe it's a slight problem to tidy, but this cost the business nothing.