Last Minute Glitch

Drama,Drama, Drama Yesterday! 

Flight checkin was at 4:45 pm and at 2:25 pm, as I was leaving my nail appointment, I received an email from KLM saying we were downgraded to economy from business class (BC). WHAT? I've had this flight booked for over 6 months, I had selected seats. I've been talking up BC to the Q and getting myself all psyched. All packed according to flying BC. I am not flying economy! So on the phone to KLM. I was in transit at the time and didn't have easy access to booking numbers, etc. Michael at KLM was very helpful, gave me his name and extension so I could call him back once I got home. At home I could see a couple of other flights that had room for 3 in business. I was able to reconnect with Michael and he put me on hold and said he'd work on it. He did get me another flight, but wanted to charge me 689 per person! NO! Not my fault you bumped me. Okay, well it will be 500 something without the tax. NO. Then he booked me on something else, BC, no charge. He gave me the flight number but I had no booking or confirmation number and I could no longer see my original booking. He said, I'll send you an email, you should have booking info in 2 hours. Then we got disconnected. Okay, so now I'm really panicking; it's almost checkin time for the original flight (that I have no access to) and I looked at the KLM site and saw no modified booking. I phoned my friend Michael back and got him. He confirmed I had a flight, departing later, in BC. I asked about booking seats. He said he could do that, did it, and that it would be 200 per person to book a seat. I said NO!, Since when do you pay to book a BC seat; I'll book it at checkin. At this point I'm not sure if I have a flight at all, and if it is economy or BC. I still could find no flight on any website or had a email.

I had initially booked these flights through my bank points plan (RBC Avion). Time to phone them. I would have started with them, but found the KLM phone number first while I was doing this in transit, and Michael seemed capable and was trying to help. Okay, RBC looks at it and says it looks like it is AF. She's going to call the airline. While I'm on hold, I check the AF site and find, YES, yes I do have a business class flight booked, like Micharl said. I go to book seats, but it wants me to check in. My passport info was there, but DH wasn't there any more. Fortunately his passport was sitting on the desk and I entered it. Feeling much better now and the RBC lady comes back on the call. She can't help me now, as the airline has taken the booking over. Okay, I thank her, tell her I found the flight on the AF site and I think I'm good. Called Q and got his passport info, because his is gone too. Okay now we are checked in and I go to select seats. Low and behold, the seats Michael talked to me about and wanted 200 each for, were booked. I did change them to available seats more to my liking and printed that boarding pass PRONTO! I don't know if I was misunderstanding Michael with all those fees he wanted to charge. Or if that is just a money grab they try. I had to rebook our car pickup from the hotel and one tour that we will not arrive in time for, I rebooked to Monday.   

It's all over and done with (I hope!) and if truth be told, I prefer the new fligh times better to the prior ones. Fingers crossed, we get on that flight with no further drama.