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Wednesday 14 August 2013

German Logic Lufthansa Style

A plea from my sister-in-law and the wonderful Tim.  Seems like Lufthansa are strangely illogical for a German company.


I need advice!! In June, Steedley and George flew from Rome to Atlanta, changing planes in Frankfurt. Because they are under 14, I had to pay an additional 'unaccompanied minor' charge for Lufthansa personnel to care for them (600 euro on top of the flights). They return this Sunday and Tim and I would like them to get off the plane in Frankfurt, where I am at the moment. Tim and Hamish would leisurely drive up to Frankfurt this week to arrive by Sunday, where both of us would pick them up. We thought this would be simple. We aren't asking for any money back from Lufthansa, and Lufthansa gets the opportunity resell two seats for the Frankfurt-Rome journey, yet still keeps the money we originally paid. Lufthansa has told us that the only way for the children to get off at Frankfurt is to pay an additional 738 euro! No one can give us a reasonable explanation of why we have to pay this additional money for less service. Tim does not want to drive 15 hours from Rome to Frankfurt on his own, then drive 15 hours back just a few days later, and this price to change their tickets is the price of another ticket to the US! What this means is that I will not get to see the children on their birthday, and almost three months will have passed before I get to see them again. We have tried various times on the phone with Lufthansa and have been told that we have an 'individual family circumstance' and there is no way around the fee. If anyone has any suggestions, I would be infinitely grateful.

2 comments:

  1. Here's what I would do RIGHT NOW;

    If I understood Twitter, I'd tweet.
    Since I understand FB, I'd post. Make sure that Lufthansa is highlighted (might have to 'like' their page first) so that they are flagged.

    Many corporations now have people whose sole job is to troll social media for bad publicity...and correct the problem.

    I just had a shipment of quilts go missing through FedEx. Trying to work through their layers of 'Customer Service' was frustrating and useless. Once my friend tweeted about them and I FB'ed about them, we started getting calls FROM FEDEX all "how can we start a trace on that" etc. They found the quilts!

    Good luck!!

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  2. Ok, agree with Colleen and the troops should begin to bombard social media with "please help us retrieve our children from Lufthansa" type messages! I'm not a huge tweeter but do it from time to time - I'll tweet this blog now and make sure I include Lufthansa!

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