Aer Lingus Customer Service and Flight Changes

crafty dodger

Very misleading info on Aer Lingus website re flight change fees.

Due to contracting Covid I had to change Dublin - Toronto flights from the end of April and reschedule for late August.

Aer Lingus say on the website that there are no change fees applied up to Sept 30 2022 and that the only different in cost is the fare difference if it applies,,,,fair enough. But this is not what happens. When you go to change the flights to a new date with all legs completed before Sept 30, there is a substantial increased charge applied for the exact same fares.

Specifically. i booked 2 tickets return to Toronto which cost €417.94 each departing April 28. I then used the flight change process to change the flights to Aug 31 returning Sept 5. To do this cost an additional €130 per ticket for the exact fare types. If I went on the website and booked exactly the same fare types, as a new booking, for August 31 / Sept 5 the difference over the original fare price paid would have been €42.45 extra.... a lot different from €130. So there are definitely some hidden charges being applied here!

I contacted Aer Lingus customer service and (after about 1 hour on hold) spoke to an agent at their call centre. He listened, computed the new fare with the additional €130 as above. When I asked about the extra charges, explaining the above, he just hung up!

Next port of call was the Messenger chat service. After 3.5 hours and about 4 messages each way (mostly verifying my identity etc) and outlining the issue I was told to contact the call centre.

Nobody in Aer Lingus interested in taking ownership to answer a simple query re pricing at best and at worst deliberately concealing price gouging!

I will use Aer Lingus for all existing flights I have booked plus any of the vouchers I have outstanding but after that I am finished with them after 30+ years of regularly flying with them. There are plenty of good reputable airlines out there!