Upvote:1
I booked a flight through Gotogate and tried to rebook it on the phone with Lufthansa.
That certainly complicates things, since you have entered two different contracts. Gotogate is an "intermediary" and you need to carefully plow through the terms and conditions of either one to figure out who is responsible for what.
Regarding changes Gotogate says: https://www.gotogate.com/terms-conditions
Changes and cancellations requested by You
The conditions for changing flight bookings (including change of passenger name, destination, and date of travel) and for providing cancellation refunds are set by the relevant airline, which is your contractual partner for providing the flight. We, as the intermediary, have no influence over such conditions.
If you wish to make a change to your booking or request a cancellation refund, as an additional own service, we offer to handle the request on your behalf, provided that the conditions of the airline permit such a change or cancellation refund. During the process of booking such additional services, we will inform you of any further conditions for such services. For a list of our fees, click here
Lufthansa on the other hand says: https://www.lufthansa.com/is/en/flexible-booking
How do I rebook?
You can rebook online via My Bookings or contact us via our Service Center. Before contacting us, please make sure: to have your booking reference at hand to already have your new travel date in mind In case you booked via an (online) travel agency, please contact them directly to be rebooked.
So LH says: Gotogate must handle this.
Gotogate on the other hand says: LH determines the rules. We are happy to give them a call an your behalf, but you must pay us for it and there is absolutely no guarantee that anything useful will come of it.
That's unfortunately pretty normal when booking through third party OTA (online travel agencies). This is typically fine if all goes as planned by it all goes sideways when any type of customer service is required. You get what you paid for.
You best shot is to call LH a few times and try different agents. You should also VERY CAREFULLY read fare rules and the conditions of your original ticket. If you are lucky this spells out something specific about flight changes that you can use in the conversation.