In December I was scheduled to fly to St. Kitts. Ticket was paid for, but I never got the paper ticket in the mail. (I can’t remember why I never got an e-ticket.) Anyhow, ticket never came in the mail, and the agency didn’t return phone calls about this, so I just showed up for the flight. They let me on the flight since there was a reserved seat, but charged me $75.00 for “lost ticket.”
WHY? The seat was purchased, not the piece of paper. I was there on time, with passport and ID on hand. What did it cost them $75.00 for? So, if the ticket was sent, and USPS didn’t get it to me for some reason, why on earth should I pay extra?
This seems to be a random decision on the part of the airlines, as the following nightmare example will show:
A few years ago, flying back from England, I lost the paper tickets for our flight, probably when I tripped and fell (yes, flat on my face) shortly after getting up at 4 a.m. on the way to the car. We discovered that the tickets were gone only after we got to Heathrow. My wife booked her flight with Lufthansa and only had to play a small fee. I somehow booked the same flight with British Airways, and they refused to respect my booking, forcing me to pay another full fare! And all that despite the fact that they still had me in the computer as a vegetarian!
That probably doesn’t answer your question, but then again there probably isn’t any really good excuse for poor service and unnecessary fees.
Paper tickets are a pain to create for the airlines. Also, when you lose that ticket, they have to flag that ticket number down and all sorts of other precautions to make sure that somebody else doesn’t reuse the ticket.
Thill: I agree. There certainly doesn’t seem to be an excuse!
BobT…I thought of that, but these tickets were purchased at least 30 days in advance, and NW could easily have issued E-tickets if indeed they are cheaper. I prefer them anyhow, they’re easier to change if need be, and one doesn’t have to worry about losing them. I realise there may be extra labor to issue paper tickets (though it was the airlines’ choice to do so, not mine). But once the tickets are issued, the seat is paid for, and the customer shows up…well, if it took the agent 5 minutes to issue me the ticket on a little piece of paper - seventy five bucks?!
A few years ago I flew on the World’s Worst Airline (which I will refer to here only as DA) from the World’s Worst Airport (which I will refer to here only as ATL) to Boston and return. In Boston I discovered that the DA ticket agent in ATL had taken BOTH my ATL-BOS and BOS-ATL tickets (sorry, flight coupons) and put them in the machine at the gate so I had NO ticket to return from BOS-ATL. I was finally able to get on the plane for a $75 lost ticket charge but wanted to get the money back when they found the BOS-ATL flight coupon which they had put into the machine at the gate in ATL. (I figured they would surely detect the BOS-ATL ticket when they accounted for the tickets of the passengers on the ATL-BOS flight since it would stand out from all the other tickets which were ATL-BOS.) The DA people gave me a number to call to track down the missing ticket. For months I called the number. The ticket never showed up. Evidently, they don’t look at the flight coupons when they take them and the machine that they insert them into is evidently a fancy looking waste paper basket.
I had an earlier experience on a European carrier (either KLM or Lufthansa IIRC)when the person I was travelling with lost his ticket from Frankfurt to Lome. As I recall it was a bit of a hassle but didn’t cost anything to replace it.
Obviously, the $75 has nothing to do with the airline’s costs or justice. It is evidently what the airlines marketing people feel the traffic will bear.
WAG
The replacement ticket charge also works as an incentive. If people generally knew that there would be no charge to replace a ticket, why would they take the time to search out a ticket that was “lost” in their office? The airlines are trying to encourage people to treat a ticket like an important document. It isn’t much actual work, time, or expense to replace one ticket at check-in, but there would be a difference if 10, 15, 20 people started showing up for a flight without their tickets. Maybe this will change when E-tickets become standard issue.
I know this wasn’t the case for you, Carina42, and I think you would have a good case for having the agency reimburse you. They should have provided tracking of the UPS delivery (or lack of one, in this case).
Oh, and one more FYI, the last time I bought an airline ticket online, there was a box to be checked if I wanted an E-ticket, and it specified “for domestic flights only.”
RVWAG (Really Vague WAG) IIRC from a friend of mine who works for a major airline, the flight coupons legaly entitle the bearer to the flight, which is why they take it off you before you fly, and utlimately all you are left with is a receipt at the back which is stamped as not being valid for flight. So if you handed the ticket to somebody else, with some hassle they could take that ticket, get it changed to their name and fly. I guess the $75 charge was an incentive for you not to loose your ticket so nobody else could make that switch. Charging you for a whole new ticket would have scared away more business than it would have saved.
IMHO, I don’t buy the incentive thing. You have to check in at some point at the airport, whether up front or back at the gate. It doesn’t seem like it’s that much trouble for them to print up your tix, and I don’t think a whole slew of people would start forgetting their tix if they knew it wouldn’t cost them anything. I actually had no idea this fee even existed until I read this, and I’ve never lost/forgotten my tix (I probably just jinxed myself, dangit).
Also, I don’t understand the problem with having these lost tix floating around in the wrong hands. What does one do with them? “Ah, yeah, I’d like to change these tickets to my name. Who’s this guy on the ticket? Well, see, he’s the one that gave 'em to me as a gift…” Maybe, having a pathetically law-abiding mind, I’m failing to see the obvious. These things are good for a one-time only event. Trying to use a ticket for a different flight will only work if the person at the gate doesn’t look at the ticket and verify it’s for the right flight, and then, if you do make it on board, you have the whole hassle of seating. You’ll probably look pretty conspicuous getting bumped from seat to seat as people filter in the plane until you find an unbooked seat (if there is one). Telling the woman at the gate that it’s a coupon good for flight no matter who’s name is on the thing ain’t gonna get you on the plane.
So, I ask, how does one make use of such a ticket such that it costs the airlines $75 of work? There must be some airline workers here that can give us the inside scoop!
I used to work for that famous British Airline and actually wrote a significant part of their ticket matching and accounting system processing system 6 or 7 years ago.
Paper tickets come in two parts - the sale coupon and the flight coupon. The sale coupon represents your money which the airline has collected. This money is not available to the airline until either it is matched with the flight coupon collected when you check in or it passes its expiry date. This rule is specified by IATA because until you actually fly there is the possibility that they will cancel the flight or, restrictions permitting, you may ask for a refund.
Should you lose you flight coupon the airline must go through quite a rigmarole to issue a replacement and link this with the original and still comply with the rules so they can get at the money. In addition they have to be careful to flag the missing coupon as lost or stolen as it may turn up somewhere else; in parts of the third world airline tickets are treated as hard currency.
Airlines obviously don’t like doing all this so they may try and penalise you if they can.
Was the original purchase done with a credit card? If so, dispute the charges for the original ticket (service not rendered), and pay the $75. Pocket the difference as a “inconvenience fee”. What can the airline do? They allowed you to get on the plane for $75, so that’s how much you should pay.
Airline tickets, at least international ones for scheduled flights, are subject to all sorts of regulations and treaties. When you buy a ticket that’s what you get, a ticket. The airline is required to accept a valid ticket or issue a refund but what you purchased was a document, not a flight. If you lose it they may take the view that you lost it so you pay. Exactly what they do will depend on a number of factors including how much the ticket cost (don’t piss off first class passengers if you can help it) and the mood of the check-in staff at the time.
This is the general case. Local regulations may place additional restrictions on the airline.
Unfortunately, it was paid for by check. I don’t think disputing it would work in this case, because services were rendered - I did fly to & from my destination. I can understand $75.00 for changing my ticket once I get it, but I’m still having a hard time seeing why I had to cough that money up since the seat was paid for and reserved in my name.
Ticker had the most informative answer, though I don’t really understand why the airline isn’t paid until I show up at the gate with the coupon. Somebody cashes the check, takes my cash, or immediately charges my credit card long before I ever get on the plane. So is the money sitting in an escrow account somewhere? Because if I plain don’t show up, or let the ticket expire, I’m SURE the airline isn’t going to refund me!
Anyhow, for the record, it was United. I have found their customer service crappy in the past, and will try to avoid flying Untied in the future.