> 2- that the agent on the phone did something that allowed me to pay for the fare

I think you are overestimating the powers of telephone agents with respect to website errors. Their abilities tend to be extremely limited and anything like you describe would have to be escalated to a dedicated team that would not be responding in real time like you describe.

> 3- that the agent or someone was going to pocket out the 56 EUR difference.

Definitely not the agent. Could you imagine if agents had the ability to pocket any money from customers? I think the “or someone” you describe is AirFrance and the system wasn’t fully showing the CSR the right info.

There are sometimes sales commissions, but the CSR's main goal is to get you off the line as quickly as possible so that the next person doesn't yell at them for being on hold forever. I can't speak for Air France, of course, but I can't believe they would want to make the call longer to make 56 euros. If they quoted you 14 euros on the website, they would be most happy in the world where the software accepted your 14 euros and you never called them.

I'm guessing the original commenter just hit a bug. They should have retried some database call, but didn't in that one codepath, and it cost them the entire request. It happens.

Speaking from experience as a frequent flier, I encounter more errors trying to check out than I do successful flight bookings.

The general state of airline IT reliability is atrocious.

He's also overestimated the reliability of Airline booking systems.

IT for every airline, creaks and groans loudly.

Websites are very modern interfaces to the Sabre system that was originally developed in the 1950s. The way it was described to me at the time I was working in the travel industry (20 years ago, yikes!): Sabre is essentially a command-line system, which means the API-like interfaces that have been grafted onto it over the decades are not nearly as stable and robust as we'd like them to be. I'm sure they've improved tremendously since I first used them, but the entire system is still based on very old technology that just wasn't meant to do what we're doing with it. Connect to it with an airline agent's terminal, though, and it's quick and reliable, just as COBOL-based banking systems are.

When did they finally get rid of the green screens?

They haven't. That's why the system feels like it's stuck in the 80s.

About 1 in 8 of my AA flights comes with, “When you reach the gate please say your last name and seat number, our terminal isn’t scanning right now”

> anything like you describe would have to be escalated

What they described seemed plausible if one assumes malice (not that they should). Naively, I suspect your take is more accurate but nothing as explained requires escalation if Air France is indeed engaging in the described behaviors.

I was booking an Air Canada flight once and the website wasn't working. Called in to book and they added on a $30 call center booking fee. I explained I called because the website wasn't working, and they told me I should have called in to technical support for that. I swore at them and hung up, I think I eventually found a way to book online. The depths of depravity these airlines will go to to screw customers know no bounds.

As other pointed out, this is probably just down to terrible airline IT. I don't know if AF/KLM are worse than others but it's remarkable just how bad it is.

Recently they had a bug where once you selected a seat for one flight in a booking you were blocked from any later seat selection in that booking. The only way to fix it was to call customer service.

I'm lucky enough to have access to the platinum line. You get to talk to people who are pleasant, competent and have sufficient authority to actually get things done. This should be the experience for every call to customer service but I guess it would be too expensive.

Since I can't edit my original message anymore:

I think we can probably exclude malice (from the agent at least), like many commenters pointed out. It is, however, infuriatingly shady for AirFrance to not address these issues. Doubly so because at the end of the day it benefits them.

Many many customers aren't tech savvy, won't place a call, will pay the fees, or downright abandon trying to get their money back because of how difficult AirFrance (and other airlines) make the process. And at what point should _not_ fixing these issues be labeled "malice"?

AviatoError? F-ing Erlich.

THE Aviato?

To be honest, their websites fails spectacularly more than half the time, even when trying to look up a flight.

Funny enough, it’s even worse when abroad, and easily fixed by using a VPN that exits in France.

or legitimately there was a server error and you just happened to hit the right "try later" window lol

I could have been more clear in my story. I tried multiple times over a few days, before caving in and calling customer support. The agent 100% did something that fixed the error.

Given the general incompetence it might as well be just their lookup of the flight that suddenly validated it (udated their cache maybe?)

Probably, but I doubt it's as intentional as you suspect, if only because that would require a level of competence I don't think they have (Hanlon's razor and all).

It's important to observe that Hanlon's Razor does not exclude malice; it merely reminds us that incompetence may be the better explanation.

Then we can further observe the possibility for a third form of the apparent dilemma: organisations tacitly and systematically weaponising their incompetence.

Weaponised incompetence is definitely at play here. Intentionally writing bad code - or worse: code paths that intentionally show higher fares that CSRs can trigger - would put them one whistleblower away from serious regulatory and PR consequences.

However, a legitimate bug/lack of attention to detail coupled with a dysfunctional remediation process will effectively achieve the same outcome without leaving conclusive evidence for a regulator to prove malice.

In this case there was a bug that got sidestepped when the CSR looked up the account (maybe a cache got flushed?), the bug is most likely known but is rotting away in some Jira backlog because making the system work well (the work they should’ve done in the first place) wouldn’t give anyone any promotion (or worse - will expose their incompetence) while “raise spam letter frequency by 10% to increase engagement” is scheduled into the sprint because the product manager wants their praise for their upcoming promotion.

Never attribute to incompetence that which can be attributed to apathy.

Had a similar experience with Turkish. Free flight change but the website didn’t work and every time I called them I got insane price differences that were almost the same as a full flight ticket. I ended up going to the airport sales office and doing it there (still did not come cheap)

Qatar also offers a “5% premium” when you request a voucher instead of a refund. But hey the premium is on the price before some base fees, so the voucher total is almost exactly what you paid, not 105% as you’d expect.

I had the exact same experience except I paid the CSR fee…