My Mom was coming to visit Portland and the Oregon Coast from the desert Southwest last month when she fell ill and didn’t want to subject everyone on the plane to whatever sickness she had. I called the airline she was travelling on in order to change her ticket, and after being transferred, I was told that unless I changed the ticket online, not only would I have to pay the $150 change fee, but another $75.00 for speaking to an airline representative. I told them “Thank you, but I’ll book it online.” Could I find where to make a change to a reservation? Heck no! I could book a new reservation, use mileage, check flights, upgrade to a different fare class, but could I change an existing reservation? Nope – that option was no where to be found!
So, I called the airline back, asked how to change an existing reservation online, and was told that I would need to speak to someone in Customer Service. After explaining what it was I was trying to do (for the second time in this phone call) I was transferred to another specialist, who told me that I needed to speak to a "web specialist”. (You’ve all called the airlines – by now I’m 45 minutes into the phone call waiting to speak with the appropriate person.) When I eventually did get to the web specialist, he told me that he couldn’t help me – he could only help me if I was having internet issues, or a specific website issue . (I thought I was having a specific website issue, but apparently that was a matter of opinion.) While holding all over again for yet another person to speak with, I finally figured out that by pulling up the existing online reservation, going all the way through the reservation to the end, I could actually change the dates and use my credit card for the $150 fee.
My point is, over the course of two phone calls, I ended up speaking to 6 people. I’m wondering if they still think it was worth $75.00 to have me make the change online, since my future travel plans will include attempting to avoid this airline altogether. If someone had just told me to pull up the existing reservation, go through it, and at the end I’d have an opportunity to change the dates, it sure would have improved my opinion of the airline. In this case, not only did the “rule” of having a charge for speaking to a live person seem silly (since I had to speak to 6!), but the Customer Service aspect went right out the door. Most times rules do need to be followed, but then there are those times when someone just needs to step back and say “Is this reasonable?” Speaking to 6 people to avoid being charged by 1, simply wasn’t reasonable!
About Sue Bennett