A frequent flyer has questioned if she was overcharged after she forked over $2,300 after she used her nickname to book a flight.
An unnamed husband took to Reddit to reveal that his wife tends to go by her nickname, Cathy, and booked the flight with this name.
However, because her full name, which is Catherine, is listed on her passport, the couple ran into issues when traveling.
He revealed that his wife had to splash out a whopping $2,389 to change the name on her ticket.
In a thread titled, Delta, the lovebirds begged people on the web for advice as he claimed the airline initially attempted to charge them $18,000 to switch the name on his wife’s ticket.
A frequent flyer has questioned if she was overcharged after she forked over $2,300 after she used her nickname to book a flight (stock image)
The post was titled: ‘Should it have been this expensive?’
The passenger explained: ‘We were flying internationally for the first time. My spouse has a name that has a common diminutive form – we’ll use “Cathy” for “Catherine” as an example.
‘”Cathy” is the name she uses on all her identification, including her driver’s license and was also her name she has flown with and is on her Delta Skymiles account.
‘When we made our plans to fly, she had to get a passport, and on her birth certificate, her name is “Catherine.” So the passport is in that name.’
However, when she booked her ticket, the information on her Delta account was automatically filled in and the name on her boarding pass was Cathy.
‘When we made our plane reservations, the information from her Skymiles account was automatically filled in and the tickets were issued for “Cathy.”
‘When we went to do the part of international pre-check in (don’t know what the actual name is) where you have to enter your passport information, hers was flagged because the first names were different,’ he revealed.
After reaching out to the airline, the woman was told that she had to buy a new flight.
An unnamed husband took to Reddit to reveal that his wife tends to go by her nickname, Cathy, and booked the flight with this name
The Reddit user added: ‘When we called, they told us they would have to cancel our tickets and rebook them with the correct name at the current price (which, by the way, would have cost $18,000 more than we had paid – we were flying Delta One – it was a retirement trip we had saved for for years).
‘After escalating to a supervisor (because our trip would not have happened if they needed $18K), they said they could change the name but there would still be a fee involved to do so – $2,389.32.
‘We didn’t see that we had any choice so we paid the fee and the tickets, with the exact same confirmation number, now showed with the correct name.’
Although the issue was finally sorted, the couple revealed that they were left shocked when they discovered that they may have been overcharged.
At the end of the post, the passenger said: ‘When we were at the airport, we had the chance to talk to the rep at the Delta One check in counter and when we shared the story, she frowned and said that didn’t sound right and suggested we look into that when we returned. You all are the Delta experts – is this reasonable to change a name?
‘Did they really do us a solid by not charging us $18,000 for new tickets? Should I just chalk it up to our naiveté/stupidity in not making sure the passport and Skymiles name matched?
‘Or would there be some way to dispute this charge, either through our Delta branded Platinum AMex, where we charged it to, or directly appealing to Delta?’
People on the web flooded the comments section and shared their thoughts, with many of them revealing that they have had the same ticket correction made for free
People on the web flooded the comments section and shared their thoughts, with many of them revealing that they have had the same ticket correction made for free.
One person said: ‘Fix your drivers license. I can’t stress this enough. I have gone through this. The state will allow it. Your wrong name becomes a legal alias and they update your license with real name.’
Another user commented: ‘I had to do this last summer and it was absolutely free. No idea why it would cost so much. Agent took care of it in five minutes on the Platinum line.’
Someone else wrote: ‘My ex-husband had a similar situation – he had to cancel and rebook a new ticket. Luckily, it was caught about six weeks before an international trip and cost about $600 to remedy (flights to Mexico from Southern US).’
‘Sounds like you got scammed. Earlier this year my wife became a US citizen and changed her last name to my last name. Her US passport was issued with her new last name but her maiden name is still on her EU passport. When we flew Delta round trip to the EU over the summer I booked the tickets in her maiden name (EU passport) and we flew there no problem. On the return to the US it was an issue when we checked-in at the airport that the ticketed name did not match her US passport. The ticket agent called and had the ticket reissued to match her US passport in 20 minutes and there were no additional issues.’
A spokesperson for Delta told DailyMail.com: ‘We invite the customer to contact us directly to share what they say happened so we can look into this further. Delta does not have change fees.’
