My "day job," if you will, is booking award tickets for people. As cliche as it sounds, part of what I love about what I do is that no two days are the same. And by that I mean I have a different run in with incompetency at the airlines almost every day... often several…
Continue reading: Call Center Chronicles: “Sir, they must be predicting pretty strong winds”
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Do call center people do any training with regards to time zones? For frequent fliers, or even businessmen who have to deal with other time zones, this is a pretty simple task, but I have found many that are surprised that time zones exist at all!
@cyby: Forget frequent fliers, everyday people know about time zones! I feel like sometimes you get agents that are trained at being inept...
@ michael -- Hah. The ticket was only on a courtesy hold, so I doubt that was a factor here.
Lol OMFG :P. I guess US Airways just started serving customers A330s with flux capacitors XD.
LMAOROTF! This is great therapy. Loved the reply about "strong wind" and "some planes fly faster than others". Yes, this is a great idea for the blog. Keep it UP!
@AKTCHI - Lucky enjoys the masochism. He really does. I'm a fan of his when we see how he does things the hard way or other dumb things. Like walking down the external stairs of a hotel after locking himself out. Or getting completely lost in Paris for what should have been a 10 minute walk.
@Lucky - compile these gems and give yourself a new revenue stream in the form of a book we can all read at 35,000 feet.
Lucky, I've had a Chairman's Preferred supervisor tell me that I couldn't layover in CDG because it "isn't a US Airways International Gateway". I simply said, "forget Paris" and hung up.
JRL
You must save these stories for a book. It would definitely be published, unless that CSR eventually gets a job at publishing house.
The thing that constantly surprises me is when I am trying to apply common sense to something (aka 25 minutes between flights is NOT enough time to change terminals in LHR) and they always say "well, the computer says it is".
*headdesk
A nice side effect of these chronicles are that they will increase your business revenue ;).
I once booked a trip from BOS-YYZ-PVG-CTU for three adults and one infant. The flight was scheduled to arrive in PVG +1 day. I booked BOS-YYZ-PVG online myself on CO.com. Then I called to add PVG-CTU. The agent accidently put the previous day. The system was smart enough not to allow that. The agent passed this to his boss then to his boss' boss. They first told me that it was a reward trip so that PVG-CTU was not allowed. After 10 minutes argue, their conclusion was that the infant messed up the PVG-CTU segment because AirChina did not sell infant ticket. At that time, I freshed CO.com and noticed the mistake. However, they refused to change even if they agreed the date was wrong. I hang up and called back. They even put notes in my reservation. Other agents were not willing to change after reading the stupid notes. I had to cancel the reservation, wait for the miles to be re-deposit, and rebook the whole thing.
Great story! I wish I could say I've never had anything like this happen to me, but alas, I cannot.