cnc2002
Dec 30, 04, 1:55 pm
I've been trying on and off for 2 days to book award travel to use most of my US Air miles on UA OR AC. There are 5 of us and I only have enough miles for tickets in the N.America or the Carribean,prefer Mexico but interested in any Carribean or Central American destination, with the American Southwest better than losing the points altogether.
I find it takes at least 20 minutes to get an agent but the 4 agents I've talked with have been and are unwilling to look at a wider range of options. For example, I can leave from BOS, MHT, BTV or Montreal, I can leave anytime 4/15-17 and want to return 4/22-24. On one attempt, the agent found me a DEN-Puerto Vallarta (PVR) outbound and a PVR-SFO return but didn't find anything from the northeast. S ince the DEN flight was early on 4/16, I wanted to look into traveling the night before to DEN from any of the departure places listed above. He would only check one option for a domestic outbound leg--he tried BOS but either could not or would not check any other northeastern departure city. He told me to call domestic and hung up. I've had agents at other programs suggest doing things like traveling to the gateway a day early, using a different departure city, etc. The entire process took 45 minutes. I can't even get a person to talk with at domestic award travel on a partner--I'm told call volume is heavy and that I should use the web site (which can't be used for Star Alliance travel).
What's the best strategy? My wife is a silver DM--would it make a difference calling in on her silver telephone number? Are certain times of day likely to be beter or is there a another way to querry the system? It seems that one way to curtail the demand among Div Miles holders for seats on Star is to make the process very time consuming, inefficient, and all the time you have to listen to the same recorded one minute or two minute loop.
I find it takes at least 20 minutes to get an agent but the 4 agents I've talked with have been and are unwilling to look at a wider range of options. For example, I can leave from BOS, MHT, BTV or Montreal, I can leave anytime 4/15-17 and want to return 4/22-24. On one attempt, the agent found me a DEN-Puerto Vallarta (PVR) outbound and a PVR-SFO return but didn't find anything from the northeast. S ince the DEN flight was early on 4/16, I wanted to look into traveling the night before to DEN from any of the departure places listed above. He would only check one option for a domestic outbound leg--he tried BOS but either could not or would not check any other northeastern departure city. He told me to call domestic and hung up. I've had agents at other programs suggest doing things like traveling to the gateway a day early, using a different departure city, etc. The entire process took 45 minutes. I can't even get a person to talk with at domestic award travel on a partner--I'm told call volume is heavy and that I should use the web site (which can't be used for Star Alliance travel).
What's the best strategy? My wife is a silver DM--would it make a difference calling in on her silver telephone number? Are certain times of day likely to be beter or is there a another way to querry the system? It seems that one way to curtail the demand among Div Miles holders for seats on Star is to make the process very time consuming, inefficient, and all the time you have to listen to the same recorded one minute or two minute loop.