It's nice that El Al is honoring these tickets, and giving us options to work with, though they obviously have their own interests at heart. That being said, it is always a roller coaster ride dealing with Israelis......
I called up yesterday evening to request a change to a direct fight. They told me that they were only open then for emergency bookings, and that I should call back at 8am their time when they "reopen". Called back at 8am (1am EST), and when I got through to a representative, he said I have to call back after 9am (2am EST) since their systems were ready. Called back at 2am, and told the representative I would like to change my Thursday return flight (in December) to a direct flight a couple of days later. She responded that there are no return flights Fri or Sat, but she could put us on a flight sunday morning 9:40. Then she took my credit card #, selected seats for us, took my my special meal requests, input all of our AAdvantage numbers, and told me my ticket change is final, my card will be charged $75/ticket, and I will receive confirmation within a few days. Then I asked if I could still make changes before I receive the confirmation, and she told me no, it is final.
10 minutes later (around 2:30am), I get a call on my home phone from the same representative. She told me she apologizes but she can only change my tickets to a flight on the same day as or the day before my original reservation. I said I don't understand how she could reverse the ticket change that she just made, and that she was the one that offered me the Sunday flight because there was no flight Fri or Sat, but she wouldn't budge and said I would have to pay a $600/ticket fee if I wanted to change to the flight that she had confirmed for me 10min earlier. She also said that management had just clarified all the rules about these "upgrades", and no one is allowed to change more than 1 day forward or back. She also seemed to be saying that the only return flights that they were making available for these changes was the 9:40am flight, but that she still couldn't change mine to Sunday since it was more than one day ahead. Then she proceeded to tell me that El Al is losing a lot of money, and they're doing us a favor by honoring these tickets and allowing any changes....
Of course, I couldn't accept that they were cancelling the change they had just confirmed for me, so I insisted on speaking to a supervisor. After another 10min hold, the "supervisor" came on the line and repeated the same apology story as the other representative, but said there was no way they could change my flight to Sunday.
Obviously I didn't expect much from the supervisor since "customer service" is not part of the corporate culture in Israel, but I had to try....
I went to sleep at about 3:15, and then around 45min later, my home phone rang again. Of course I knew it had to be El Al again, but I wasn't about to get out of bed for another frustrating conversation. In the morning, I missed another call from El Al, so I called them back, and after another half-hour on hold, the same representative told me that she reviewed my reservation, and she would change my flight to Sunday for $75/ticket. A couple of hours later, and I have email confirmations in my inbox for each ticket change.
I'm not sure what to make of all of this, but if you're not getting the change that you'd like, definitely HUCA!
