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Turkish Airlines (THY) Repeatedly Charges for the Same Seats Due to Operational Reasons

April 12, 2024 6:57 AM16

My wife, mother, and I purchased round-trip emergency exit tickets from Istanbul to New York. I emphasize 'purchased' because Turkish Airlines (THY) found the amount we paid insufficient and made us repurchase the same seats three times, each time at higher prices. Initially, we paid approximately ₺1000 per person for the emergency exit seats on our first flight. Later, I noticed that our seats had been changed. When I contacted customer service, I encountered the 'operational reasons' excuse without a consistent explanation, similar to what hundreds of others have experienced on this complaint page. What are 'operational changes'? As a paying and affected customer, what should I do? The answer we received was to 'purchase new emergency exit seats' (I want to reiterate that we are three people traveling together and wish to sit together). This time, we paid ₺3000 for the emergency exit seats. And guess what happened? I am writing this from New York, and when we checked our phones for online check-in, we saw that our seats had been changed again. With 24 hours left before the flight, THY, which has inconvenienced two of its passengers, made 'systematic' errors that even amateur and low-cost airlines wouldn't make to extract an additional 2-3 thousand ₺. How much did they charge us this time? ₺5000. Moreover, we repurchased the same seats, 24B and 24C emergency exit seats, which we had already bought a second time. When we contacted customer service, we encountered an extremely inadequate response, only being told 'it was canceled' without a definitive answer to 'why?'. Additionally, they said we only had the right to file a complaint without offering any solution. We ruined our last night with phone traffic and the stress it created by paying ₺1000 initially, then ₺3000, and finally ₺5000 for seats we had already purchased twice. I believe we have made history as a family that bought the same seat three times at different prices. THY, which claims to be the world's best airline, needs to understand that action, not words, is important. They are inadequate in this regard. As Miles&Smiles members who have chosen THY for years, I don't think we will choose them again in the future.

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