Trip.com Increased My Etihad Flight Change Fee Unfairly

I experienced serious inconvenience and frustration while trying to change the date of my Bangkok–Abu Dhabi–Abu Dhabi–Istanbul return flight purchased through Trip.com with Etihad Airways.

My original return flight was scheduled for May 13, and I only wanted to move it to May 14.

Starting from April 18, I repeatedly logged into the Trip.com system to update the flight date. Although one-way ticket prices initially appeared to be around $470, the system demanded nearly $760 as a flight change fee.

At first, the website displayed seemingly reasonable additional charges around $50. However, every time I clicked “buy ticket,” I received messages saying “ticket sold out, new price $65.” When I tried again, the amount suddenly increased to approximately $145, and after repeated attempts, the system continuously displayed “sold out” warnings while raising the prices higher and higher.

Eventually, I was confronted with total change costs reaching nearly $780 just to postpone my return flight by one day.

At the same time, there were still reasonably priced tickets available directly through Etihad Airways for the same dates. Because of this, I believe Trip.com was unfairly increasing the prices instead of properly processing my ticket update.

In addition, even though I was calling from abroad, I could not reach any effective customer support representative. The people I spoke with simply told me to handle the process through the website and provided no real assistance.

My expectation from Trip.com is that my Bangkok–Abu Dhabi–Abu Dhabi–Istanbul return flight originally scheduled for May 13 be updated to May 14 using the reasonable prices shown in the system or communicated by customer representatives, and that the excessive and unfair flight change fee demanded from me be canceled.