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Jul 21, 2026
Swiss Airlines Doesn’t Know Its Own Rules
Swiss Airlines Doesn’t Know Its Own Rules
00:00
09:53
Transcript
0:00
What's the worst thing that can happen to you when you travel? Explosive diarrhea. What else? Are you disagreeing with me right now? No, that's, uh, that's, that's pretty bad, yeah. How about sitting in economy class?
0:10
We always sit in economy class. Yeah, and it's always miserable. Well, one of our readers tried to escape the back of the plane by bidding $500 on an upgrade. And she ended up losing all her money, or so she thought.
0:26
[upbeat music] Welcome to The Elliott Confidential Podcast. I'm Christopher Elliott, and I'm here with Iden Elliott. If you're listening to this, you probably are familiar with the articles on Elliott Report.
0:37
You know the formula. We take a case, we tell you what went wrong. And how you could avoid something like this, and if possible, we're going to fix it. But here's where it's gonna be a little bit different.
0:47
There are emails, voicemails. It's the stuff that gets left on the cutting room floor, and it's pretty juicy. Yeah, real juicy. And that's what this podcast is all about.
0:58
And that brings us to our first case, which I call Swiss, What Were You Thinking? As in Swiss Airlines, not the Swiss people. [laughs] Okay. Elizabeth is flying from Switzerland to San Francisco. That's one long flight.
1:12
Yeah, it's 11 hours, and it's in economy class. As she's staring down this long-haul flight in terror, she gets a notification from her email address.
1:23
Swiss offers her an opportunity to bid on a business class upgrade, and so she does. She bids $500 and Swiss says, "Ja, das ist gut." You go, girl. But then, unfortunately, her plans change.
1:37
So Elizabeth asks for her money back, but Swiss says, "Nein, das ist nicht erlaubt." That credit is non-refundable.
1:45
[whimsical music] We have the actual emails right here in front of us between Elizabeth and Swiss, and let me tell you, these are, these are really awful. Like, they're just, like, so discouraging.
1:59
Quote, "We regret to inform you that we are unable to honor your request for a refund or the bid upgrade, as it is non-refundable in the event of a voluntary cancellation of your reservation or rebooking onto a flight with a different route."
2:12
Oh, that's a mouthful. "A refund for the bid upgrade can only be processed if Swiss cancels your flight or rebooks you." They just lied to us. You'll see later, they've just lied to us.
2:23
So Elizabeth gets back to them and says...
2:26
"I would like to clarify that while my cancellation was voluntary, the terms and conditions displayed on the Swiss website at the time I placed my upgrade bid stated that if an upgrade could not be carried over to the new flight, the flight of the upgrade would be refunded."
2:38
"I relied on that information when making the purchase, and I was not informed that the upgrade would simply be forfeited without a refund." Now, here's the thing.
2:48
When they say something is non-refundable, they can just keep your money, but the thing is they have to tell you that it's non-refundable before you're buying it. They can't change the rules afterwards.
2:59
And it turns out Elizabeth took a screenshot of her terms and conditions when she bid on her upgrade, and it said she could get a refund.
3:05
So she sent the screenshot over to Swiss, and Swiss said, "As my colleagues have mentioned in your previous conversation, please note that a bid upgrade is non-refundable.
3:15
Additionally, the provided document does not specify the condition of the upgrade," which basically is airline lingo for, "Go [beep] yourself." Language. I'm not gonna look at this screenshot.
3:26
[laughs] So Elizabeth says, quote, "My fare allowed rebooking. I'm therefore entitled to a refund of my bid upgrade." Once again, Swiss Air gets back to her with a non-answer.
3:38
Quote, "We believe that we have provided all the necessary guidance regarding your requests. However, we are unable to offer any further advice."
3:47
We lived in Switzerland for a period of time, and this is too much Swiss for even us. Yeah, I'm Swissing out here. [laughs] Swissing out. These guys are Swissing all over the place, and we're getting drenched.
3:59
[laughs] It's terrible. So here are the terms that Elizabeth actually agreed to.
4:05
Verbatim, quote, "If you wish to change your flight after your offer has been accepted, depending on whether the original booking fare allows rebooking, you are entitled to a full refund of the bid upgrade amount after the rebooking has been processed."
4:20
In other words, Swiss is wrong and Elizabeth is right. The public FAQ on Swiss's website contradicts this and is also not in grammatically correct English for some reason. [laughs] Yes.
4:31
It says, "Refund is possible according to fare conditions of originally booked ticket, only together with the ticket. Standalone refund of bid upgrade is not permitted." I thought these guys were details people.
4:44
Apparently something went wrong with Google Translate, who knows? Okay, my advocacy team asked Swiss about Elizabeth's case, and it offered a kind of snippy response. "We have nothing to add here," it said.
4:56
"While we can understand the customer would have preferred another outcome, this does not apply to a passenger having voluntarily changed their booking." In other words, [beep] you.
5:07
[laughs] In other words, na, na, na, na, boo, boo. Yeah, right. [whimsical music] Before we tell you about the outcome of this case, here's what we can learn from it.
5:22
There are two different types of changes when it comes to airline tickets. There are the ones that you make and the ones that they make.
5:28
Now, if they had made this change, she would have gotten a refund, no questions asked. She made the change, and that's where the problems were.
5:37
So when you have any kind of a ticket change that you make, make sure that you're going to get a refund if it's one that you make.
5:44
If you pay for an upgrade in addition to an economy class ticket, they likely will have a policy in place to keep your money. Here's something that Elizabeth did that I thought was really clever.
5:55
She took a screenshot when she put in her bid, and that way, she knew what the terms were.
6:01
Most people don't even bother doing that, and so if there ever is a dispute, they have no paper trail, no evidence that they actually put in a bid and that these were the terms.
6:11
Similar to how if you rent a car, you're gonna wanna take a picture of the exterior. We always do that, so that way if they try to ding you for any sort of damage, you have pictures to show them.
6:21
The real failure here is that Swiss decided that it was gonna just ignore Elizabeth's emails and send her these automated responses that we read you. That's just crazy, you know?
6:31
Uh, Swiss can do better, and it should do better. And if those are automated responses, that's the most Swiss thing I've ever heard of. Even the automated responses are prissy.
6:40
Yeah, that's what I would expect from an airline like Swiss, is that their automated responses seem very, you know, bureaucratic. How did we go from bidding for China to now bidding for our own comfort?
6:52
It shouldn't be that way. Every seat should have, like, a minimum comfort level, a little bit of leg room so that you can stretch out, maybe a meal, maybe...
7:00
You know, if you're gonna be on a plane for 12 hours, you should have, like, a minimum, just something. Some- th- you know, it- the- they shouldn't torture you. Come on, guys.
7:10
I just want my airline ticket minus the femur breaker. I don't wanna feel like my legs are in a trash compactor. Who does? Maybe some weirdo. [laughs] Okay. I, I, man, I shouldn't have asked you that. [laughs] Okay.
7:29
We don't give up easily, and my team and I thought, "This is wrong. We can't just let Elizabeth lose $500. We have to help her." So we asked Swiss again, and this time, we made it a point to show Swiss that screenshot.
7:46
And we said, "Hey, what do you think of that?" Keep in mind, they have already been sent it. They just didn't feel like looking. So we said, "Please look at it," and they did. Again, I thought these were details people.
7:57
Nein. Nein. But there was some good news for Elizabeth.
8:01
Our guy back in Switzerland took a look at her case, actually read the screenshot, and he said, quote, "I have since checked once more with a specialized department within our customer service, and it turns out that the customer would indeed have been [laughs] eligible for a refund."
8:17
Yeah, dur. [laughs] "We would like to sincerely apologize for the confusion.
8:23
It appears that conflicting information in our FAQ led to this misunderstanding, and we will update the wording to prevent similar cases in the future.
8:32
I'm glad the situation could be resolved thanks to your persistence." Elizabeth was over the moon when she found out she was gonna get her money back.
8:41
She says, quote, "I didn't think I would ever get a resolution, but I'm so happy I reached out to you for help.
8:46
It's so reassuring to know that there's a person that will take time to help consumers resolve these relatively small but very frustrating ordeals." You are welcome, Elizabeth. And I don't think $500 is a small issue.
9:00
No, no, that's, that's a quite a bit of money. $500 is enough to get, like, 30 people plastered. Uh, are you redoing your house, Iden? [laughs] Yep. [laughs] Okay. Okay. All right.
9:12
Takeaways from this case: always screenshot everything. Know the difference between voluntary and involuntary changes. And never fly Swiss. [laughs] And no hate to the Swiss people. You guys just hurt our feelings badly.
9:26
If you have a problem that you can't fix on your own, my team is always here for you. You can reach us at elliottadvocacy.org/help. You can always email me. My email address is
[email protected]
.
9:41
And if any of our listeners need a magician for hire, my email is
[email protected]
. [outro music]
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