Questions and Answers

Good afternoon!

I have followed your blog for a while and I wanted to reach out to please ask for any insight or guidance you might be able to share on an issue I am having with Swiss.

I have a round trip ticket on Swiss from ZRH to SFO (July 8 – Aug 5). I initially purchased an economy ticket for this business trip and expensed it through my employer (they only reimburse the cost of an economy fare). At my own expense, I upgraded both the outbound and inbound flights. The costs was around 1800 USD for both upgrades (not bad!).

My business trip is cancelled, the clients I was going to see in NC and NJ are all working from home now, and my home office in SF is closed likely through the end of the year.

I called Swiss to rebook and they told me that because my flight has not been cancelled, I can re-book but only based on the originally economy fare. I would forfeit the money paid for the upgrades. I completely understand this under normal circumstances, however, on their website, their current re-booking policy states “You can rebook your flight once free of charge, regardless of the terms and conditions of the originally purchased ticket..”

I guess they can argue the upgrades were not part of the originally purchased ticket? This just feels very very wrong to me. I am not asking for a refund, I just want to retain the credit when I re-book.

Do you have any advice on who I can address this with? I have called and the Service Rep could not have cared less. I wrote via Facebook and got a canned response. I cannot find an email address to send a formal complaint to?

Any insight / ideas on how / where to address this would be most appreciated! I also appreciate your take on this, if you think my complaining is a waste of time and the money is just gone if I re-book/the flight does not end up being cancelled?

Thank you for any insight you might have.

I would look up Swiss higher level contacts on elliott.org and see if they can assist. I wouldn’t hold my breath on Swiss though.