W and K code expedia confusion

I've bought a ticket from LHR to BNA (Nashville) for later this year.

I need 7 TPs to retain silver by end of December, so when i saw the PE fare code listed as W i decided to go for it (4 TP's as W, and one from DL domestic in Y plus one Little Red return flight up to Edinburgh to get all 7). I purchased the ticket, linking my FC number to it, and VS's site is saying it's a K class ticket.

VS tell me their system says its a K class ticket.
Expedia say their ticket says it's a W class ticket and ran through to VS to confirm this. I have print outs and emails (and their own website confirms this).
Air France (who ticketed it for Delta) say it's a W class ticket and that W may be the equivalent of K

Naturally i'm sceptical and i don't want to miss out on silver because of one tier point.

Any suggestions i can take to get this sorted out?

If it was a one way ticket (which is suggested by your routing) then it can only be a W full fare as one way discounted are not sold. (I may well be corrected !!).

Its a return ticket. Both LHR-DTW and return legs are marked as W according to Expedia. The return legs fall after the anniversary date (hence the little red flights to reach silver).

I called Expedia again earlier and after 1 hour 20 on the phone they told me that its actually class K and nothing can be done.

I'm not too happy with that as they explicitly sold me class W. And all my receipts say W.

When you book with VS directly you can pay up to higher fares but not sure if you can do that with expedia bookings.
If not then what I would do if you really think silver worth having is to buy your DL flight in F class which may not cost much more than Y and will give you 3 TP.

Or book another Little Red - EDI-LHR can be had for about £50 off-peak.

Not that Ag is especially worth having, save for the extra miles.

If not then what I would do if you really think silver worth having is to buy your DL flight in F class which may not cost much more than Y and will give you 3 TP.

I called both Expedia and DL about going to F, and they can't upgrade me to F for the DTW-BNA leg without upgrading the VS leg from premium to upper. I can try to do it on the day.

I raised a complaint with expedia in the interim and won't go after that final TP until they respond.

All airlines use the letter codes slightly differently.

It sounds like you have a AF/DL marketed itinerary, which means you need to look up DL's usage of buckets W & K (which will not necessarily relate directly to VS's use of those buckets).

DL uses W to indicate PE flights on partners AF, VS & VA metal. This doesn't mean that VS has to put you into their W bucket, though.

DL uses K to indicate discount economy flights on DL metal. This does, however, mean a K bucket on DL.

What a pain for you fusionblue

Having carried out this transaction for a specific purpose I can understand your irritation/annoyance. I'm sure most of us have had a cunning plan only to have it thwarted for some reason.

It maybe that VS take a sympathetic view & allow you to retain silver even though your return flight is after the necessary renewal date. It has been known, but, you won't know that for sure until such time you've taken the flights & spoken to an understanding customer relations agent who for the sake of a point allows silver retention.

If it was me, & I had explored all avenues, obtained all necessary paperwork, exhausted the complaints procedure & been unsuccessful I would advise Expedia that I intended to take legal advice & see what happens. It may be that you belong to Which? Legal Service & you could access their lawyers FOC or a national paper's query section e.g Telegraph Money or Travel.

Or you could take the suggested extra flight.

Good luck. Keep us posted. Unfortunate for you, but interesting for the rest of us.

Roxy-Popsy

Unfortunately this is the way it works with code shares. Just because the ticketing carrier denotes this as W class, it does not mean it has to map over to the same class with VS. There are for instance many examples where partners use the same booking code with one meaning first class and the other economy. You wouldn't expect to sit in a F seat having paid only Y.

I'd say mark this down to experience and move on. It sucks but nobody has done anything wrong, not Expedia, not VS. Best advice is as above and ask VS if they would kindly consider crediting the extra tier points.

Just to further confuse things there are sub codes within fare buckets - for example there are several different types of 'S' fare.
If you are not confused enough by now think about a combination of fares - for example M out and W return - where the W has the restrictions of the M (not the W) even though it is W !
As mere passengers we are not supposed to understand any of this.