I paid £2,100 for a flight to China – but I made one tiny mistake and they are now trying to charge me £9,000 for a new ticket

A despairing business owner says his flight booking ‘turned into a nightmare’ after he made a small error on the ticket, with the airline telling him he will have to buy a new one for £9,000 – or more than four times the price he originally paid.

Alex Coombes, 39, from Worthing, West Sussex, who owns a chain of local restaurants called Perch, set his heart on going to a large hospitality expo taking place in Shanghai, China, next weekend.

His colleague Damian Wilkins, 45, from Eastbourne, was hoping to accompany him to the international showcase, with the pair looking for new ideas for their expanding restaurant business.

But just weeks after booking their tickets for £2,100 each with China Eastern Airlines, Mr Coombes noted there was one tiny error on the document.

He had left out a ‘k’ and spelt his colleague’s surname spelt as Wilins, rather than Wilkins.

Mr Coombes was confident such a small error could be rectified, but he claims he has instead been ‘dragged through weeks of stress, spiralling costs, and sheer corporate absurdity.’

Despite spending hours on the phone to American Express Travel Agency, through which he booked the tickets, as well as racking up an international phone bill of  hundreds of pounds speaking to China Eastern Airlines, neither business has been able to resolve the issue.

Instead, he has been told to cancel his ticket and purchase a new one for his colleague – with today’s price quoted as £8,948.12.

Even that figure is likely to rise again, he has been warned.

Mr Coombes now stands to lose thousands buying a new ticket – or simply cancelling his travel plans altogether. 

In desperation, his colleague even explored the idea of changing his name by deed poll so that they could keep the erroneous ticket.  

The restaurant owner today described his treatment over one tiny spelling error as ‘outrageous’, adding a stonemason working at one of his restaurants even joked that ‘if the ticket had been carved into granite it would have been easier and cheaper to correct.’

Recalling his ordeal, Mr Coombes told MailOnline: ‘At the end of November, after a long day at work, I finally sat down to book our flights to China. 

‘We used an agent rather than booking through the airline directly, because we had used AmEX previously.

‘It was 11pm at night — I remember the exact time because I was knackered. 

‘The trip was meant to be short — just a few days — because neither of us can be away from the business long, but what should have been a simple booking turned into a nightmare.

‘It was only in January that I noticed when we printed out the tickets and sorting through hotel bookings that I had misspelled the name. 

‘It’s a hundred percent my fault and I’m not trying to shirk that at all. 

‘We got back in touch with American Express Travel, who said at the time it didn’t seem to be a problem.

‘But then we went through a couple of hours of being on hold and requests and callbacks and things like this and they didn’t seem to be able to help. 

‘Then we started to contact China Eastern Airlines who we hadn’t used before, but it turns out they just have no UK base.

‘They have an address in London that we went to – but there’s nothing there anymore. 

‘And if you phone the UK number just cuts you off after 20 seconds. The only way you can contact them is to pay £1.80 a minute and phone China – and we have spent hours upon hours trying to get this fixed.

‘We emailed every contact we could find for the airline, even searching LinkedIn. 

‘I just can’t believe that it’s such an impossible task to get resolved.’

After getting nowhere with the airline, Mr Coombes said he returned to Amex and was informed the only thing he could do was to cancel the trip and lose the fare.

After complaining, another customer services representative told him the airline had agreed to refund the fare minus £380, as long as they purchased a new ticket.

But at that time, the prices had leaped up to £3,800, meaning he would be out of pocket.

As days have gone by with the issue still unresolved, ticket prices now stand at around £8,948.12 – four times the amount he originally paid. 

Mr Coombes also claims that as for the terms and conditions for the airline, he could ‘not find anything, anywhere’. 

He said: ‘There’s nothing written down for it and every time you ask for this no one can send them through.’

The frustrated traveller added that while Amex directed him to speak with the airline, China Eastern Airlines has informed him they can only deal with the agent he booked through – leaving him in an unresolved situation between the two companies.

‘I’ve never come across anything so preposterous,’ he said.

‘We won’t be booking with the travel agent ever again – and apparently if we had booked this directly with the airline, you can make changes with them – but the airline doesn’t really want to speak to us because our contract exists with Amex. 

‘We’ve just had real difficulties getting people to return a call and make any sense out of this.

‘I just want the surname amended on the flight. I can’t understand how it’s this difficult. 

‘I can’t imagine that this is that much of a challenge for anybody to achieve.

‘It’s an enormous amount of money for us to spend on doing something like this, we’re really trying to do something different and put ourselves out there, but it’s just been going on for so long. 

‘It’s taking a huge amount of energy for just changing a single letter in a surname. 

‘I know I made a mistake, and an admin fee is entirely reasonable, but £9,000 just feels outrageous.’ 

MailOnline has contacted American Express and China Eastern Airlines for comment.