UKH

I have booked flights to Mallorca for July this year, but decided to move the holiday to 2021 as some of our party couldn't make it anymore (flying from Australia) and the airbnb villa kindly allowed us to rebook to 2021 at no extra cost.

Easyjet however.... 

The dates for next summer have just been released today, I go to "my bookings" to change the flights and they want an extra £30 for each ticket and each leg (for identical flight times) OR, if I choose a different time flight (on same day) they want an extra £80 for each leg, on each ticket.

I thought I would check, so asked a friend to go online and try to book the same flight as a family of 5 , and low and behold...he was offered the tickets at the same price as I paid originally (actually slightly cheaper)

So for the identical flights, they want me to pay and extra £200. For a different flight that same day, up to £800 extra for all of us round trip....but to a new customer, no "premium" WTF is that about? w@nkers!

Have now been on hold for 3.5 hours waiting to speak to someone to ask why I have to pay a huge premium to swap my flights (they make a big song and dance about no fees for changing flights because of CV-19)

....now breath ..... ggrrr

Yep, my sympathies, we had flight booked in March  but moved them to September, cost me £200 odd from memory, it was still cheaper than not using and rebooking though. 

One of our group booked the wrong flight for our ski trip earlier this year.  It was cheaper for her to just book another flight than change the existing one.  could be worth considering if you can cancel and get a bit back and rebook at the cheaper price- would it work out cheaper that amending?

But yes, a batshit system.

Definitely cheaper to just pay up to change flights. I am particularly annoyed because those seats are cheaper for a new customer. That's why I want to speak to someone on the phone. But that in itself has become a war of attrition waiting on hold lol.

Silly thing is it's just putting me off ever using them again. 

Did the original flight take off? If not I would be inclined to book as a new customer and write to them requesting a refund for the original booking. There's a risk you might not get it though of course.

Have they cancelled the flights or are they flying but you don;t want to go?

I had flights cancelled for the beginning of July and managed to move them to more expensive flights to a different destination free of charge.

This was being discussed on, I think, you and yours on radio 4 very recently. Might be worth a listen. 

If the flights were cancelled just claim your refund and rebook. If the flights were still operating and you just wanted to change flights, a £30 per flight premium on rebooking seems like a better deal than most budget airlines would offer.

I was due to fly to Croatia with EasyJet a month ago, I received my refund a couple of days ago.

Flights haven't been cancelled (they haven'e happened yet and I see no reason for them to be cancelled now). i am just trying to change them to next year. I am not particularly surprised they are charging me more for the privilege, but am vexed that a new customer gets the seats cheaper. 

Anyway, I know i'm not going to win this battle, just wanted somewhere to let off some steam

They also charge you the difference in price if its more expensive, which i presume is what the issue is here, when you change the flight you are logged, so they can tell you what they like with regards to price difference. 

You need to calculate carefully the difference between sacking off the flight and buying new flights in totality vs moving them, sometimes it pretty close, was £75 less than booking new in my case.

was an absolute nightmare to get my flights changed this morning but could do it all for 'free'

the servers were under heavy load and had to use 7 or 8 tabs to get it booked in the end, i say free surely the flights should have been cheaper as so long in advance but what can you do as some people such as yourself are worse off

spent 1hr 45 mins on the phone (started at 5past 8am and they open at 8) and got hung up on as soon as i was through so that was a non starter

I'll be avoiding them for the foreseeable due to how they handled the flight lockdown situation.  

Is a new customer actually getting them cheaper, or is the charge <change fee> + <price difference>?

I believe they were offering free flight changes until a few days ago but this offer has now ended. Can't find an article to reference though (about it ending).

Is there any scope in claiming it back from your credit card company, then rebooking?

Since prices for airline seats change all the time, dynamic pricing I think they call it, airlines are probably trying to avoid people cancelling and rebooking if they see the price of their seats drop. I suspect that is what you may have fallen foul of.

Yeah, it is possible someone had a flight at that price level in their basket then released it.  The same thing can happen with train fares.