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A despairing business owner says his flight booking 'turned into a nightmare' after he made a small error on the ticket, with the airline telling him he will have to buy a new one for £9,000 - or more than four times the price he originally paid.
Alex Coombes, aged 39, from Worthing, West Sussex, who runs a series of local eateries named Perch, has set his sights on attending a major hospitality exhibition happening in Shanghai, China, next weekend.
His colleague Damian Wilkins, 45, from Eastbourne, was hoping to accompany him to the international showcase, with the pair looking for new ideas for their expanding restaurant business.
However, mere weeks after securing their reservations at £2,100 per person through China Eastern Airlines, Mr. Coombes spotted a minuscule mistake on the ticketing information.
He omitted a 'k' and spelled his colleague's last name as Wilins instead of Wilkins.
Mr. Coombes was certain that this minor mistake could be corrected; however, he asserts that he has endured "weeks of stress, escalating expenses, and utter corporate nonsense."
Even after dedicating numerous hours on the phone with American Express Travel Agency, where he purchased his tickets, along with accumulating a substantial international calling fee from conversations with China Eastern Airlines, neither company has managed to fix the problem.
He was instructed instead to refund his ticket and buy a new one for his associate, with today’s price being £8,948.12.
That number is expected to increase further still, he was cautioned.
Mr Coombes could now face losing substantial amounts of money either by purchasing a new ticket or by canceling his travel arrangements entirely.
In desperation, his colleague even explored the idea of changing his name by deed poll so that they could keep the erroneous ticket.
The restaurant owner today described his treatment over one tiny spelling error as 'outrageous', adding a stonemason working at one of his restaurants even joked that 'if the ticket had been carved into granite it would have been easier and cheaper to correct.'
Remembering his experience, Mr. Coombes shared with MailOnline: "Toward the end of November, following a lengthy day at work, I settled down to reserve our tickets for China."
'We used an agent rather than booking through the airline directly, because we had used AmEX previously.
'It was 11pm at night — I remember the exact time because I was knackered.
The journey was intended to be brief — merely a couple of days — as neither of us can stay away from our enterprise for an extended period; however, what ought to have been a straightforward reservation escalated into a nightmarish experience.
'I didn't notice until January when printing out the tickets and going through the hotel reservations that I had incorrectly spelled the name.'
It's entirely my responsibility, and I have no intention of avoiding that.
'We resumed contact with
American Express Travel stated back then that it did not appear to be an issue.
However, after going through several hours of waiting on hold, making request calls, and receiving callback attempts, it appeared that they were unable to assist us effectively.
Next, we reached out to China Eastern Airlines, which was a new choice for us; however, it became apparent that they do not operate from the United Kingdom.
They have a location in London that we visited, but it's empty now.
If you call the UK number, it disconnects after 20 seconds. The sole method to reach them is by paying £1.80 per minute to call China; we've wasted countless hours attempting to resolve this issue.
We reached out via email to each contact associated with the airline that we could locate, including browsing through LinkedIn.
'I just can't believe that it's such an impossible task to get resolved.'
After getting nowhere with the airline, Mr Coombes said he returned to Amex and was informed the only thing he could do was to cancel the trip and lose the fare.
After complaining, another customer services representative told him the airline had agreed to refund the fare minus £380, as long as they purchased a new ticket.
But at that time, the prices had leaped up to £3,800, meaning he would be out of pocket.
As days have gone by with the issue still unresolved, ticket prices now stand at around £8,948.12 - four times the amount he originally paid.
Mr Coombes also claims that as for the terms and conditions for the airline, he could 'not find anything, anywhere'.
He stated, "Nothing is documented about it, and each time you request these, nobody seems able to send them through."
The irritated traveler mentioned that although American Express told him to contact the airline, China Eastern Airlines stated they could only address his issue with the booking agent he used, leaving him caught between both parties without resolution.
"I have never encountered something so absurd," he stated.
We won’t be using the travel agent for bookings anymore – and apparently, if we had reserved through the airline directly, they would allow modifications. However, the airline seems reluctant to communicate with us since our agreement is with Amex.
We're facing real challenges in getting people to return calls and make any sense of this situation.
I simply want the last name updated on my ticket. It’s baffling to me why it should be so complicated.
I find it hard to believe that this would be such a difficult task for anyone to accomplish.
This represents a substantial expenditure for our budget to undertake such a project. We genuinely aim to create something distinctive and make a bold statement, yet the process has dragged on for quite some time now.
'Expending a tremendous amount of effort merely to alter one letter in a last name.'
I understand I erred, and a management charge is completely justified, but £9,000 seems utterly excessive.
MailOnline has contacted American Express and
China
Eastern Airlines for comment.
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