Overseas call centers are garbage
 

Just called United to try and book two award tickets.

Finally got answered by an Indian sounding gentleman. Explained I wanted two business class tickets for two passengers each with 125,000 miles in their accounts. He checks our mileage accounts and confirms the balances back to me. Gave him dates said they were both flexible +/- 3 days. Much muttering and tapping of keyboard and he says no tickets with one type of award, he will try another. Announces he has flights gives me all the details, I agree they are OK and he says he will book them and it will be $437 in taxes and 450,000 miles for the two tickets. So I say if we only have 125,000 miles each we don't have enough miles for that ticket. OH right he says let me speak to my supervisor. Comes back and says we can offer the tickets for $1100 each. So I say is that $1100 each plus miles and he says no just $1100 plus a booking fee. I said what for business class tickets, he say no they are in economy.

What a bloody idiot, if I had wanted to buy economy tickets I would have done that online myself. The only reason I called was because I can't see a way online to book two award tickets at the same time using miles from each passengers account.

Re: Overseas call centers are garbage
 

They're pretty much all shit these days, every where :D

Re: Overseas call centers are garbage
 

While overseas call centres can be shit, I strongly suspect the root cause of your problem to be because it's United, whose default state seems to be not being able to find their arse with both hands.

I also suspect that the call centre also can't make one booking for two people using two sets of miles, so I think you may as well save yourself the grief and do the whole thing online as two separate bookings.

Blog entry I happened to read earlier today about the sorry state of United's systems when it comes to booking award travel. As someone with a stack of United miles it was scary reading...

Re: Overseas call centers are garbage
 

That is scary.

Problem with doing it as two separate bookings is you get one ticket booked, and then find you can't book the other one.

Re: Overseas call centers are garbage
 

Use two different browsers to make the bookings simultaneously?

Re: Overseas call centers are garbage
 

Feeling the love for United at the moment. After KLM pretty much abandoned us when they cancelled our flight, United saved us. Mr Weeze was on the phone to overseas call centers for 4 hours with KLM. With United, one call and we were sorted.

Re: Overseas call centers are garbage
 

When you say "one call and we were sorted" - what exactly did they do for you?

Re: Overseas call centers are garbage
 

They moved people around such that we could be sitting together (Me, Weeze, mini-Weeze, infant Weeze). They also noted that there would be an infant, as KLM had forgotten to tell them. They had only had us in the system for two hours for a flight leaving in 24 hours time and it took 10 minutes to get it all sorted.

Even getting us sitting together on the outbound leg had been problematic with KLM.

Re: Overseas call centers are garbage
 

I've booked 2 award tickets on 2 account for me and the wife. I sit at the desktop PC with a laptop to the side, so I'm logged into both accounts. Then figure out the seating charts to make sure we're together.

Only time it went wrong was when clearly only one award seat was available... so when one went through the other glitched and said no more seats! That was for biz class travel, and of course it was mine that didn't go through... so ended up with the wife sipping champagne in seat 1A while I sat back in economy :o

Re: Overseas call centers are garbage
 

Ya know, if you insist on speaking with someone in the US - they have to transfer you. You may wait for 3 bloody hours but you'll get someone here.

I used to do that with my phone company all the time - they don't know anything off script so I told them I wanted to speak to a CS rep in a US call center and they transferred me.

Dunno if it's the same with airline's but worth a try.

Re: Overseas call centers are garbage
 

Why do they have to do that? Just interested in case I'm ever in this situation - but I'm sceptical at the same time....

Re: Overseas call centers are garbage
 

I'm not sure why, I just know I bluffed my way through it... at the time I was really irritated with the guy and I indignantly said: "where am I calling - is this INDIA?!?!?" knowing full well it was.

He was vague with his answer plus he couldn't fix the problem - so I said "put me through to a rep in the US" he said he could help and I said he wasn't helping and I know my rights (I don't) and to put me through to a rep in the US...and he did... It's worked about 3 times.

This was wonderful ATT...

I'm not sure how/if it will work with the airlines though. Again, if you go off script they don't really know how to handle it and I imagine not a lot of people demand to be put through to a US rep due to fear of offending them.

Of course, may be on their script now...

Re: Overseas call centers are garbage
 

Good for you. I'll admit I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between an Indian accent, a Pakistani one or even Bangladeshi. The thing is I don't know if all companies that offshore actually keep an onshore presence. Call centre agents are actually relatively highly paid in the subcontinent (and can therefore command a high level of education), whereas in the US they're low paid compared to other jobs. Some of the worst service I ever had has come from US call centers, and I tend to believe that it's the company rather than the call centre location that dictates the kind of service you're going to get.

Re: Overseas call centers are garbage
 

I'll vouch for KLM being the worst! My husband was in Iran and had to change his return flight to the USA. I was doing that for him from the USA, on the phone with KLM. I reserved the new flight for a few days later, and I got an email confirmation. When hubby went to the airport to get on the flight, they had NO record of his ticket!!! Turns out the dumba$$ who did the reservation didn't complete all the steps on his side, and it never became an actual ticket!! On top of that, when I called again to make it an actual TICKET for the next flight out the next day, they wanted to charge me the $200 change fee! I said absolutely NOT...this was YOUR fault!!! After a couple hours on the phone, they finally said OK, as a 1-time curteousy they will waive the change fee...GRRRRR...they wouldn't admit to making the stupid mistake. Then they wouldn't let me use my husband's credit card to pay for the new ticket (I didn't argue with that, cause I would have had to pay anyway for the new flight), even though the original ticket was purchased with that credit card. I had to use my own credit card in my own name, and then transfer money to pay for it from hubby's bank account. What a royal PITA!

We will never use KLM ever again.

Rene

Re: Overseas call centers are garbage
 

What difference does it make where it is? They all follow a script.