********** experience with Lufthansa - exorbitant hidden costs, no service and abusive staff

I sent the below letter of complaint to Lufthansa. I have had no response despite also sending it to Andre Schulz who heads up Lufthansa in SA. I also send another letter of complaint, 13 September. I have had no response.

Letter sent 18 October:

1. Cancellation of ticket

On 9th September our tickets for our return flight, 5th of October from M****illes (at 18:40) to Frankfurt was cancelled. We had purposively booked an ideal flight between Cape Town and M****illes which would’ve been just over 15 hours of travelling each way. I realise that because of your 14 day policy, we will get no compensation for the cancellation, but it did mean that we had an additional travelling time of 10 hours, which we should surely be compensated for.

In addition, it took 3 days of calling Lufthansa to eventually get through to discuss options after receiving the initial email on 9 September. We ended up selecting the option of flying from M****illes to Munich, then Munich to Frankfurt and then Frankfurt to Cape Town, just to reduce travelling time. That flight was due to leave at 13:40 on Tuesday, 5 October to Frankfurt and then from Frankfurt to Cape Town at 22:15.

When we however tried to add baggage to this ticket on Friday, 1 October there was no such option. We phoned Lufthansa on Friday, 1 October and spent 1 hour and 23 minutes on the phone before somebody answered. We were then informed that our ticket had not been issued for our return flight, which is why we could not add our luggage.

We then asked the Lufthansa agent if we could fly back a day earlier, 4 October, as our ticket has not been issued. He said he would speak to his supervisor and we need to call back at 8:30 on Saturday, 2 October.

We called back at 8:30 on the 2nd of October. Again we had to hang on for 34 minutes before the phone was answered. The French woman who answered the call said that she could not speak English and called a colleague. The colleague was incredibly rude, did not respond to questions, did not confirm after we gave her our booking reference and refused to speak, even though we could hear that she was there, until we eventually hung up to call again. When we redialled, we AGAIN had to hold on for over 45 minutes until somebody answered the phone. We were then helped by a very nice man who changed our ticket to Monday, 4 October for us to fly from M****illes to Munich, then Munich to Zurich and Zurich to Cape Town. We again asked if the ticket can be upgraded to an normal economy flight and he said it was not possible. I do not understand why this was not possible? We then asked for our luggage to be added for 60 Euro (as per your website) instead of 90 Euro at the airport. He responded that we had to phone again, the next day as he cannot add it straight away, as the ticket had not been issued. How is this possible?!

Then, on Sunday, 3 October we started to call again to get our luggage added at the cheaper price of 60 Euro. After more than 1 hour of holding, we eventually gave up. There was also no available function online to add luggage before or during check-in. How is this possible?!

We started calling again on Monday morning at 8:30 to add our luggage. No answer!

2. Online check-in impossible:

When I tried to check in before our flight of 25 September from Cape Town to M****illes, my partner who travelled with me (with UK passport), was allowed to check in, but I wasn’t because the check in section online said I needed a Schengen visa which I had! Despite me having the visa and all the information, your online system did not allow me to complete my visa information and I got an error message despite trying to ckeck-in more than 8 times.

I then tried to phone Lufthansa on Friday, 24 September. After 36 minutes and no answer I gave up.

I then tried again at 1t 8:30 on the 25th. After 1 hour and 1 minutes I have up. NO ANSWER

I tried again and hang up after 18 minutes and again later and hung up after 27 minutes. NO ANSWER to try and check in.

The result was that we couldn't get seats next to each other.

When we read about this problem with check-in on Lufthansa’s site due to the Schengen Visa online, we saw that people have been complaining about it for 6 years and nothing has been done about it. Absolutely shocking customer service.

3. Light economy ticket, problem with luggage and exorbitant luggage costs

I have been going overseas once a year or more for the last 20 years. During this time I have never encountered a long hall flight that did not include luggage. So when I booked the Light economy, the only think that was in bold was that this ticket is not refundable, but had to be rebooked. I have only encountered the carry-on luggage option on short domestic flights, so nothing promoted me to scroll down and look for it on an international long-haul flight.

When I booked the ticket, no message popped up to indicate that this ticket does not include luggage.

When myself and my partner tried to check-in online no message appeared at any stage asking her if she wanted to include luggage. If it did, we would’ve realised that the ticket did not include luggage and we would’ve upgraded to normal economy, which was only R700 more expensive per ticket.

4. No staff or office support at airport

It is absolutely ridiculous that there are no Lufthansa support staff at M****ille airport, despite the frequency of flights from that airport. The check in staff and the information centre staff flatly refused to offer any help and just insisted that we must call the call centre number. To add insult to injury, 3 numbers were provided to us to contact Lufthansa. Two of the three numbers did not work! The lines were dead.

Why do you not at least have a phone that customers can use to phone Lufthansa free of charge to resolve issues? Or a WhatsApp call service so that one can at least use free airport data to call? We had to spend 85 Euro on airtime on Monday, 4 October alone to try and get hold of Lufthansa, not to mention more than 10 hours of calling in the weeks prior to this.

5. Inedible food

We were shocked at the food we were served on the flight from Cape Town to Frankfurt. For supper, plain pasta was served (no sauce) with green peppers on a side plate. Extraordinary. Then, at 4am, for breakfast we were served a wrap filled with cold green peppers. Only. Completely inedible.

In addition, despite our ticket saying that all food was included for the flight from Frankfurt to M****ille, food was only served at cost!

6. Incredibly rude air steward on the flight from Frankfurt to Cape Town

On our flight from Cape Town to Frankfurt there was a baby that screamed non-stop during the entire flight. So when returning we opted for seats towards the back of the plane to hope to avoid this again, not sitting close to the crib section. During the first two hours of our flight, there were two seats open behind us and no baby close by. But after midnight one of the air hosts came to ask if anyone was sitting there. I asked him what is happening and he was immediately incredibly rude snapping at me that nothing is happening, he is moving a mother and baby there. I then said that we are incredibly tired as we have been travelling for two days already at that point, and can he not move them elsewhere. He rep**** incredibly sarcastically “oh, do you not like babies” and I said “I do not like babies who cry all night”. He then told me that he can do what he likes and sneered at me before walking off in a huff.

He then moved the mother and baby to the seats behind us. He came and apologised for how he spoke to me, which I did not accept. An air steward has absolutely no right to speak to a passenger the way he spoke to me. I was simply trying to discuss the situation with him. The rest of the journey was very unpleasant as he was serving me. I asked for white wine three times, yet he gave me red. Upon disembarkation, he greeted everyone except for me. He was a tall, blond man who worked in economy class. I cannot believe that after all our issues with Lufthansa, one then gets treated like this by a staff member.

As per the above, our experience with Lufthansa was ********** from start to finish. We expect compensation for all the over charges, the tens of hours spent on the phone, the incredible inconvenience and because of the rude, unhelpful and abusive staff.

One would think that after the way the airline industry have suffered due to Covid, that now that people are taking the risk to travel, that the airline would go out of their way to make it as easy and as pleasant as possible. Yet it is clear that this airline will try their best to ***** you over with hidden luggage costs, no food on certain flight, even when it is stipulated on the ticket, cancellations of flights and offering absolutely no staff support.