Over the holidays I recieved a call from a very good long time client. He explained to me his son had recently ordered a ticket through a random internet site to go to Xiamen China. The problem started when his son "sean" had some car problems and arrived at the airport an hour prior to departure instead of the customary 2hrs for an international flight. This would not have been a huge issue except that the flight was full and the airline had given his seat away. Well this too should have been a solvable problem at the airport. They could have rescheduled him in the next couple of days or gotten him on the next flight to Vancouver which is where his first connection was. "Sean" had shown up for the flight and checked in but the agent was unwilling to help with the situation, was overwhelmed with holiday traffic and basically said sorry and tough luck. The United ticket agent (this was a code share flight for Air Canada to complicate things even more) said he was a no show, which means that you lose the value of your ticket. Sean paid over $2000 for his ticket and was understandly upset. He no choice but to go back home and try to get help from the internet provider - airfare.com. Sean explained the situation several times to an agent that spoke very limited english but, the only solution they gave him was to buy a new one way ticket at $1500 to get there and he could use his original return reservation (this was almost as much as he paid for the whole roundtrip). Thats when I told his Dad I would call him and see what I could do. I can understand a change fee but losing the whole ticket....ridiculous!
After talking with Sean and getting more details and a copy of his original ticket, I could understand why the ticket agent was having such a hard time getting his ticket reissued for another day. Sean was booked on Air Canada for four legs of his trip and Southern Air China on the very last hop from Hong Kong to Xiamen. Well, any international ticket should be validated on the over seas carrier or at least the carrier for the majority of the flights....no carrier could reissue that ticket except airfare.com (which they said they couldnt do) or Southern Air China which has only two airport locations in the USA, none in Portland Oregon. After several phone calls and frustrating conversations I was able to get ahold of an exteremly knowledgeable agent at S.Air China in Los Angeles. He was able to rebook the ticket and charge the change fee of $125.00. He couldnt understand either why the ticket would have been validated on So Air China when it was just one small hop out of five flights on Air Canada - I'm sure it was a commission issue for Airfare.com but it created a major disaster for the passenger. As it turned out Sean was delayed a couple days but arrived on Dec.24th and was able to spend Christmas with is wife.
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