Complaint Review: Lufthansa

My family and I will never be using Hotwire or traveling with  Lufthansa again. By far the worst customer service experience we've ever had. My aunt and cousin purchased 2 tickets from Denver to New Delhi in May. Today, they were supposed to fly back to Denver with a flight from New Delhi to Vienna, Vienna to Frankfurt, and then Frankfurt to Denver. When they arrived at the airport in New Delhi, they were told that they would need a visa to connect through Vienna. This is the first time anyone had mentioned this. After talking to customer service reps at both Hotwire and Lufthansa, they are both blaming each other and saying it was the other company's responsibility to inform the customer that a visa is necessary. Because of this issue, my aunt and cousin were unable to board their flight and are currently stuck in New Delhi. When they asked if they could be scheduled on another flight, Hotwire said they could only credit $180 per ticket and that they would also charge a change fee, and a change fare fee (the difference between the price of the original tickets and the new ones). So in total, Hotwire is asking them to pay approximately $4,000 to get back to Denver, which is absolutely ridiculous. My mom has been on the phone (off and on) with Hotwire customer service for the past 12 hours (Yes, that's correct) to try to talk to someone to see what they can do to help. The phone was disconnected numerous times, and no one ever called back. She was transferred to people over and over again and was finally able to talk to someone at the corporate office. The last person she spoke to was someone named Jimmy (he refused to tell her his last name) and he said that he was the highest authority that we could speak to. If they had known ahead of time that a visa was required, they would have booked a different flight. Incredibly disappointed by the customer service (of lack thereof) at both of these companies.

We were also just told by a family member that a visa is only required if a person is planning on staying in Vienna for more than 24 hours. This means that the Lufthansa staff at the New Delhi airport gave them the incorrect information and this issue could have been completely avoided.