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Lufthansa and False advertising

“I met a lo-co airline pilot yesterday who said his airline makes more money from commissions on car rental and hotels etc booked through their flight booking site, than they make on flying.”

Possible, but improbable, and not supported by the quarterly published figures :)

“It’s quite possible since a 737 needs an average ticket price of about €150-200 to cover the costs.”

It’s not that bad actually. EasyJet spent 46EUR per seat ex fuel, and 22 on fuel in 2014 (at 1.22 EUR to the pound).

Last Edited by Shorrick_Mk2 at 23 Mar 09:09

It probably is true for the cheap tickets. If you sell a ticket for €20 then it’s very possible that the commission on a €200 hotel booking / car rental will be more than that.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

True, but you won’t get the revenue from the hotel booking without the client base you’re selling the tickets to…

you won’t get the revenue from the hotel booking without the client base you’re selling the tickets to…

Well, yes, you still need to run the airline to get the commission on the hotel and car business

A lot of accountancy people miss this point. They often say “we can shut down this operation because it is not making any money”

I am indifferent to Air France

Post-AF447, I can think of several people who never fly Air France if they have a choice….

An old saying in investment circles is “buy on the third profit warning”. Obviously this assumes that at that point the existing board gets replaced by smarter people. Not always the case!

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

At least for the airline business the commission is trivial in the grand scheme of things. Easy’s “non-seat revenue” is 1.4% of total revenue.

Italianjon…. Things are never that simple.I bought a ticket that actually had a rebooking fee of 130 Euro. with the intention IF I needed to rebook it would cost me only 130 Euros

Over the years I would on rare occasions change the departure date usually never by more than a few days to a week without an additional unseen charge. When they mention a different class, Flex or Premium coach is what most people would think about not that basic coach. However there is a subcategory for basic that is never mentioned. Actually 4 different ones depending on such things as return dates dependant on the ticket original ticket. These seats can be change behind the scenes as the airline wants because it is never transparent to the customer.

So here is what I wrote customer relations:

Dear Sir:

I would like to bring to your attention that your website for online booking has false and misleading information for rebooking fees. When I was originally searching for an airline, one of the criteria, was the remote possibility that I might have to rebook my flight. With that in mind your rebooking fee of 130 Euros was an acceptable amount so I therefore booked with your airline.

As luck would have it, indeed I had to rebook my flight. In rebooking through the computer on Sat 21st of March I went through the process up to the point of charging my credit card only to find out there was an additional charge to the one advertised on the rebooking icon on the website. In trying to resolve the issue I called your online help telephone number only to get a recording that stated, the office is closed and is only open on weekdays. Considering I would imagine most of your customers book via the internet I find it totally incomprehensible that your helpline is not available on weekends.

So next I called your general number which states that it is available 24/7 however after being on hold for more than 45mins.I finally gave up and booked hoping to not get locked out. Therefore, I decided to clear it all up during your work day 23rd of March.
After speaking to both a customer rep and her supervisor about the upcharge, the false advertisement, as well as the inability to select the seat which I had already been charged for, I received the reply, that if I didnt want to pay for the upcharge I didnt have to rebook and that if I had bothered to go into the contract details I would have found that indeed, there is an additional upcharge allowance beside the rebooking fee. My response was, that if the rebooking Icon had stated “130 Euros (40,100FT) plus additional fees might apply”, I would have searched for a different airline. Because I would not be sure of my total rebooking charge. I do have to say the supervisor did allocate a seat which was acceptable to me.

However another mysterious increase in the fee occurred between my rebooking Sat cost was 69,000 FT (originally 159,000FT for R/T flight) and the new cost Monday of 173,000FT for R/T. The upcost between the two flights was 14,300FT yet the additional charge to me was 29,100FT plus the rebooking fee of 40,100FT to equal 69,200FT. There is a 14,800Ft discrepancy I can in no way reconcile. .

After another call to customer service because, I was given the wrong internet address, even though I repeated it several times, yielded more information. That rep was helpful. She explained that there are several different classes beside Premium and Flex. Altogether about 4 in the economy not including the ones mentioned. So these subclasses are not listed on the online check in and there is no way of checking for the class. The only way you know you are in a different class is when one gets to the payment at which time you will see there is a different class because there is a price increase. It does not explain the class or the reason for the increased fee other than an increase in price. After pressing the issue the only difference in K and L class is when one expects to return. In my original L class it was 3 months in the K class 1 year. Now clearly this is a bogus upgrade since it is a contrived upgrade. If you tell me a flight has allocated 50 K class seats, 20 L class seats and whatever additional seats from the time you can start to book and that remains constant till the flight lands AND it is clearly marked for the consumer, I would say OK. But this is not happening. Nobody but the company (Lufthansa ) knows how many seats are allocated into which section and from what I can see may be added or subtracted as the airline feels necessary.

Leaving out these mysterious classes and fee increases with each, it still remains that, your Rebooking fee is not transparent regarding the total charges one would expect after clicking onto your rebooking Icon. So I feel that it is a gimmick that snares unsuspecting clients and not worthy of a national carrier with your history or stature. One should not need to go to the fine print to determine ones travel charges might be higher than what is advertised. Even the fine print would not tell you about the different classes you might be allocated all under the heading of Economy Coach.

The remedy I seek is to have that 29,100FT reimbursed to my credit card due to all of the above mentioned reasons.
If you choose not to do so I will be forced to write to the German aviation authority which oversees consumer airline activity.
And of course you will be loosing a customer.

Please let me know how you intend to respond to my complaint.

Sincerely,

Dr. Eugene Haller

PS I did book with your airline an additional flight (BUD-JFK R/T) for an April to May flight prior to this incident. Depending on the above resolution you will determine whether I book any further flights with Lufthansa.

The letter gives a basic overview.

Now I have to get the agency that oversees Consumer Fraud and Abuse.

I really dont see why they just dont charge for toilet paper or for the use of restrooms. It can be put into the fine print of the booking contract.

KHTO, LHTL

Besides these airline fares are ridiculously low. They cant blame the customer, if they, the airlines, decide to lower the fees to cut each others throat.

Nobody told me that by buying this ticket IF something were to go wrong, it would cost me much more than I anticipated and Customer service would be only a dream and you would get hours of grief. Thank you Ill pay more not to have that privilege.

KHTO, LHTL

I agree with Peter when he says that this sort of thing is an advert for flying GA if you can.

On a lighter note, this is remarkably close to the truth.



I read somewhere that someone had written to Ryanair suggesting that they charge for toilet paper but that they should put a picture of Michael O’Leary on each sheet….

Last Edited by Jonzarno at 24 Mar 06:56
EGSC

I’ve missed Lufthansa strikes by a day twice, so just uncertainty versus actual cost and delay (so far). Similar to flying VFR!

Hah – Silvaire – I like that comparison!

Indeed my despatch rate of VFR flights (granted, they were only planned if good conditions could be expected) has been better than on Lufthansa Group (including GermanWings) flights recently. I used to be indifferent towards which domestic airline I book in Germany if the fares were comparable (actually, it would depend on how many flight legs I’d still need to prolong lounge access and all that). Nowadays, I consciously book AirBerlin as often as possible because they’re more reliable, on-time/speedier boarding process, and the service level in Economy Class is actually a tad better.

Hungriger Wolf (EDHF), Germany

All the airlines today will rip you off at any opportunity, and none of them are much better than any others.

Really? Last time I checked they all have great difficulty generating profit, or are you saying you’d rather want them to increase standard ticket prices for everyone, including you everytime you travel?

All they are doing is balancing their revenue generation so that most people benefit, which results in a few people missing out, yes. It would be a rip-off if the industry was doing well, but it isn’t.

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