It seems Etihad have an extremely "unique" way of charging date changes for a flight. We had a return flight booked for London to Melbourne, the London to Melbourne leg has already been done. Due to circumstances around Visas which are our fault we need to change the date of ticket with Etihad.
When booking our ticket we can see the change cost is 135 pounds, which is fine and we were happy to accept. However after ringing Etihad we were told the total cost to change the flight for 1 way from Melbourne to London was going to be $853 which was the fare difference and change cost. It seems there are 13 different economy classes and we got u class or t class or whatever.
However when I log onto Etihad's website I can see the return leg for a London to Melbourne flight is currently 330 pounds. If we could get on that ticket we would be paying no more than change fee as our original cost for the return leg was more than 330 pounds, however as our economy fare is u class and the 330 pounds flight is below that at s class or something we cannot use that one for the fare difference and have to go above our class. When we did this with Qantas we actually received a refund.
Has anyone else had experiences like this? Were they able to get around them? Etihad's customer service has been atrocious. They charge like a first class airline but their policies are in line with a budget airline.
Cheers
Unfortunately that's how they are. The fares you see online are not the same as what they sell on the phone, so even if theres no actual fare difference online they still charge you one.
When my sister made a mistake with the her flight date, Etihad couldnt care less even though we pretty much rang them straight away, and because the flight was originating out of Singapore we weren't covered by Australian policies.