Ok, managed to change the flights my sister had booked for her family through expedia brazil last night
I was on the phone (mostly on hold) for 3 hours:!:, apparently very complicated due to having adults, children and infant on same booking. Then CC failed when being processed so it took another hour on the phone this morning
But a few things I learnt:
- I was told they typically quote a 200 BR buffer per passenger in case price changes during the (lengthy) process of changing ticket. Which explains why I could never get a quote that matched the website. The actual new fare matched what I could see on the .br website (and thus the additional collection matched what I expected).
- The fares originally booked were in N and most recent sale was in O. In this instance, the fare was lower, and this explains why I could never change to a straight MEL-SIN-MEL in previous calls. Instead, changed the SIN-MEL sector to SIN-SYD-MEL sector, which meant additional taxes and put the tax inclusive cost up slightly and thus allowed it to be reticketed, even though base fare was lower.
- Credit card via phone was very onerous - they wanted address, postcode phone number etc, and as I said above, took an hour to process.
- The agents use a DOS-like reservations system, thus you need to be patient.
In the end, worked out, after lots of patience.
